


Young Men's Fancies

by jat_sapphire



Series: Still Amok and associated stories [2]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pre-Canon, Starfleet Academy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 20:49:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15009170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jat_sapphire/pseuds/jat_sapphire
Summary: Kirk's adventures in Starfleet Academy. He's bisexual. So is Gary.This work was once a series of stories, a giant WIP that I got overwhelmed by and gave up on. But I reread it at oocities and thought, I can wrap up this plot and call it a story. I think 2 more chapters.So thanks to oocities for existing, and to my beta readers back in the day, and the kind fan whose username I no longer know who betaed the last time I tried to revise and complete it, when it was stored on a 3 1/2 inch disk.





	1. That Fairness Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk's adventures, junior year at Starfleet Academy. Includes the little blonde lab tech he almost married, whom I am identifying with Ruth.
> 
> I also borrowed Lillian from islaofhope's stories.

*****  
**September, Jim's Senior Year**  
*** 

This was the best, Jim knew.  How could it get better? 

"Oh, babe ... Oh, Ruth, _Ruth_ ... yes, yes, you're so _good_ ..." 

Her legs around his waist.  The sun on his back.  Better than good. 

When he dropped his fists and leaned forward on them, they dug into the sand under the blanket, and her heels pushed into his buttocks, urging him in.  Her muscles gripped his cock as it slid in and out.  Her hands rubbed up and down his arms.  She said, "Yesss, yessss, there it is, yes!  Now, Jim, darling!  Now!" and she jerked under him, her eyes closed so tightly the lids seemed puckered.  He moved his hands then, to grab her breasts where the nipples were hard as pebbles and hot, and he threw his head back to catch the breeze on his sweaty face.  A cloud moved over the sun, he could tell even with his eyes closed, by the sudden shade and the way the breeze turned cold, and something about the tightening of his own skin in goosebumps set him off, and he came, his groans in counterpoint to the gulls' cries in the air.  He was shaking.  They both were. 

He eased himself down on the blanket and she scooted over to make room for him.  He pulled her over and got her head on his shoulder the way he liked it, her hair spread under his cheek, and they lay damp and chill except where their skins touched.  Jim looked up into a sky even bluer than Ruth's eyes and patched with huge fluffy clouds, the kind that city kids said were like sheep.  He'd seen sheep close up, but he never liked to disillusion luckier people. 

She hadn't said anything yet.  That was unlike her. 

But maybe then he could try leading up to what he'd been planning to ask her.  He'd thought of a romantic dinner, roses, the whole thing, but maybe it was better here. 

"Ruth," he said, and waited. 

"Mmm?" 

"Ruth, you are so wonderful.  That was so sweet, babe.  So good.  Like always." 

"Mmmm.  You're nice too, darling Jim." 

"Do you ever ..." he began, and then lost his nerve.  It had seemed like a good idea in his head, he could hear the line and it sounded romantic, and all that, but now he was actually hearing it in his own voice, for real, irrevocable, he didn't know whether he could go through with it.  But he did want to.  He thought.  She was very still on his shoulder and he thought she might even be falling asleep.  "Do you ever think, Ruth, that you'd like to ..." he paused, swallowed, couldn't think of a better line at this last minute, blurted it:  "that you'd like to do that, feel that, every morning and every night for - years? Forever?" 

She sat up.  He couldn't see her face.  "Ruth?  Babe?" 

"Jim, we need to talk," she said, and her sober voice told him all he needed to know. 

"Oh," he said, and sat up himself.  Suddenly, being naked wasn't wild and free and sexy, it was vulnerable ... and chilly.  He looked around, remembered his sweatshirt was still over near the cooler.  His swim trunks were right here, but they were also soaking wet.  She had wrapped her arms around her breasts and drawn up her knees, her tangled hair around her shoulders - he was willing to bet she wanted something to wear too.  He waited, in case she wanted to reject him right away, but she didn't say anything for the few seconds it took him to shiver and think, the hell with this. 

"I'm getting my shirt," he said, standing up.  "Want yours?" 

"Oh, Jim," she said, and caught her breath, and something in her voice made him remember that she was actually older than he was, "Oh, Jim, what a _nice_ guy you are!" 

One 'nice' too many.  "Jesus, Ruth, just answer," he said, a flash of irritation through the fog of his shock.  "Is that a yes about the clothes?" 

"Yes, please." 

He got up and walked the ten feet or so, picked up the clothes and brought them back to the blanket, where she still sat in the same position.  "Here."  She pulled the loose blouse over her head and he did the same with his sweatshirt.  And he put on his shorts, and she got up and slipped into the stirrup pants she'd worn to cycle down to the beach from the chemistry lab where she worked.  Then they sat helplessly down on the blanket again, facing each other. 

"It wouldn't be fair to you," she said at last, pushing a loose lock of golden hair behind one ear. 

Now there was a sentence that was nothing but trouble.  Jim was getting to hate it when people told him they wanted to be fair to him.  He wasn't too thrilled about the times he felt he had to be fair to other people, either.  Was this going to go on his whole life long, he wondered?  This fairness thing got in the way of some great sex. 

"You're not in love with me anyway," she went on after a pause. 

"How do you know? How would anyone know but me?  _I_ think I am." 

"You _think_ you are, Jim darling?"  She sounded sad about it. 

"Look.  Ruth.  I was asking you to think about marrying me.  I'm not going to do that if I don't _love_ you." 

"You've never said so." 

"I just did!"  How unfair could a girl get?  He realized his hands were clenched, and relaxed them, trying to stop glaring, trying not to lose his temper. 

"Anyway there's another reason," she said.  "About me."  She took a deep breath.  "I keep thinking about Gary, and that's not fair to you." 

"Gary?  Gary _Mitchell_?" 

"Yes." 

"I didn't know you knew Gary." 

"I knew him before I met you."  She looked to the side, toward the ocean, blushing. 

He assumed there'd been an affair and wondered how long it had lasted - or how they'd met - since this was only the summer break after Gary's freshman year.  He thought of saying, 'so you started fucking me because you couldn't fuck Gary?  What if I said that made two of us?' 

But he had known a few girls who'd gone nova when Jim mentioned liking guys too.  And anyway it wouldn't have been true about Gary.  Not - not lately. 

*****  
**Previous October, Jim's Junior Year**  
*** 

Midshipman-Lieutenant Jim Kirk, instructor for Section 5 of Ethics and the Decision-Making Process, looked down at the paper he was reading with a mixture of anger, dismay, embarrassment, and half-denied amusement. 

He closed it and looked again at the title page.  "How the Other Half Lives:  Ethics in Short-Term Interpersonal Relationships," read the title, and lower on the page was "Ens. G. Mitchell," with the date and course number.  It was a paper about picking up sex partners in bars, written in the form of instructions, based on the assumption that the reader had never had sex, much less picked anyone up, and needed all the concepts explained.  It was accompanied by a hyperflow-chart on a padd for further clarity. Jim's name was never used; the reader was never directly addressed.  It filled the requirements of a paper describing a common process and its ethical components -  well, the ethics really weren't particularly strong. 

Especially the part about deliberately trying to get under the instructor's skin.  That was a bad ethical move - a bad _practical_ move. 

But Jim couldn't think of a single comment he could write on the paper without feeling like he had walked right into Mitchell's little practical-joke world.  He could tell him that it was foolish to irritate the instructor - thereby admitting irritation.  He could make a few marginal notes pointing out flaws in the techniques \- now _that_ was mature.  He could - he could go find Mitchell and shake him until his teeth rattled.  That was a satisfying image and he dwelt on it for a little while, until he found himself thinking a little too much about the way Gary's - Mitchell's - shoulders would feel and how he'd look .... 

Damn.  Mitchell was too _damn_ attractive. 

And hadn't he been playing on it?  He'd flirted with Jim in an understated way from the first day of class.  Brought him article clippings and complimented his haircut and leaned over the desk ... Jim had regarded him with a steady cold gaze and responded as little as possible.  And Gary - _Mitchell_ \- had scaled back until he only flashed that too-charming smile once or twice a week. 

That had been a victory.  But then Jim found he missed the smile. 

Now, he put "How the Other Half Lives" aside and picked up Ensign Harper's paper on the ethics of buying a used flitter, but found himself on page three with no real idea what the thesis had been.  He put Harper's paper down and stood up, stretched his arms and shoulders, and then went to get a fresh cup of coffee.  Then he tried again.  This time he caught himself drifting on page two. 

How the hell was he supposed to grade Mitchell's paper?  Why was Mitchell making it so hard for Jim to grade him fairly?  Jim sighed.  It wasn't like Mitchell couldn't do the work of the course perfectly well, if he'd just stop spending his energy subverting the course requirements and simply _do_ them. 

Jim went for a run and listened to some music and did some of his own homework, and then went back to the papers and graded most of them, but didn't look at Mitchell's again that night.  The next day, he dropped in on Ben Finney, a former instructor and now a friend.  He started out just visiting, but soon he found himself pouring out the story of the paper he couldn't grade - though he left out the part about flirting in class, and was conscious that he was making the whole story harder to understand, but ... well, he just couldn't tell Ben about it.  It felt like betraying Mitchell, somehow, which was weird and worrisome, but he still couldn't. 

"Let's see the paper," said Ben, "and I'll see what I can tell you.  I can at least say what _I'd_ give it." 

"That would be a help," Jim told him.  And he even had the paper with him - all of them, so he could do the rest of the grades at lunch and hand them back. 

While Ben read, Jim watched;  various expressions chased across Ben's craggy face, and once he gave a snort of laughter, and another time he frowned.  Jim was almost as anxious as if he had written the paper. 

"Hmm," Ben said at last, and closed the paper again, and straightened the fastener, and looked out the window, almost as if _he_ were anxious. 

"He can write pretty well, can't he?" Ben asked, eyes apparently on the tree outside. 

"Yes, when he pleases.  And he's a natural leader in the class: everyone listens when he bothers to talk.  Not all that often.  And - well, I don't feel comfortable grading him down when I'm not sure he doesn't get it, and I'm too mad to give a high grade.  That's why I need advice." 

"It _is_ an inappropriate topic," Ben said.  "He sounds like a prankster.  I'd hate to have served under someone like that on a starship." 

Jim bit the inside of his cheek. Ben had never in fact served on a starship, and in an unwary moment he'd told Jim so.  The funny thing was that Ben still talked as though he was an experienced line officer.  But what was really making Jim feel like laughing was the phrase "serving under."  Like "served under glass"?  Like "servicing"?  Oh, sure, Ben servicing under Gary - what an image.  Jim set his jaw hard and thought about something else, that tree Ben had been looking at, until the desire to laugh right in Ben's face subsided. 

And then he abruptly stopped being amused, because Ben said, "Frankly, I can't give an entirely unbiased opinion.  I've been hearing about this Gary Mitchell, and ... well, it hasn't been all that good."  Ben looked out the window again.  "He is talented, but I can't help thinking that there are types we just shouldn't admit to the Academy." 

This was not the first time Jim had heard Ben express similar views, but he was much angrier about it this time, when it wasn't some faceless 'type.'  He swallowed hard, as if his anger were a physical object he was holding down, and said evenly, "Are you saying you'd grade this paper on the basis of whether you think Gary ... Mitchell is an asset to Starfleet in general?" 

"No," said Ben, sounding as if he meant 'maybe,' "no.  But I do think that you need to focus on the big picture.  Here's another angle.  Why do you think people like us are instructors here?  Especially, why do you think a junior like yourself is teaching?" 

Jim had never thought about it much.  He shrugged.  "Because there are eight sections of Ethics?" 

"They could hire someone.  It's a learning experience for you too.  A command experience.  Oh, I know a classroom isn't much like a landing party or a starship.  But some of the same things come up.  Prioritizing.  Group dynamics.  Giving performance feedback.  And in this case, coping when someone under your command is resistant to orders or misunderstands them or simply acts inappropriately.  So, Jim, how do you attain your objective of teaching ethics to Mitchell without Mitchell's full cooperation?" 

"Good question."  And it was.  That's what made Ben a good teacher aside from all this shit about who was and who wasn't 'Starfleet material.'  "And, if he were -" damned if Jim was going to say 'serving under me' - "my officer, someone I was commanding, how would I get him to _stop_ withholding cooperation?" 

"Another good question."  Ben nodded. 

Jim thought for a moment, long enough to realize he needed to _really_ think about this, by himself, and then grinned at Ben.  "Thanks for the questions," he said.  "Now I have to figure out some answers." 

"I'm sure you will," said Ben.  "Let me know what happens?" and Jim said he would. 

"Make an appointment," he wrote on Mitchell's paper, a routine note.  Usually it meant, 'I'm flunking this paper and I'll tell you why;'  occasionally, 'I'm going to tell you to do this again.'  He still wasn't absolutely sure which he meant by it when he returned the paper to Mitchell and, after class, under Mitchell's unabashed stare, worked out a date and time they could meet in Jim's "office" \- more a carrel, really. 

That night he met Ruth for the first time.  It was years later that he found out the two events were connected.  At the time he couldn't have imagined such a thing. 

Jim was only at the lecture by chance.  He rarely went to hear guest speakers, and when he did, they were nearly always Starfleet captains or Science officers who gave presentations on new alien races or Federation members.  But this speaker was a protege of John Gill's, and Jim wanted to hear Gill's introduction, and he had thought the speaker himself _might_ be interesting.  The talk was called, "Machiavelli, Socrates, and Starfleet," and in fact it was deadly.  And very sparsely attended, so without really planning to, Jim found himself seated in a prominent spot, and afterward Gill beckoned him down and introduced him.  Jim immediately forgot the speaker's name and had an embarrassing time holding up his end of the conversation until the speaker was distracted by a blonde girl who had hung around to ask a few questions. 

So, Jim thought, someone had actually been _listening._   Gill said something to her, and she cast down her eyes and smiled, bringing out two charming dimples and showing off her long eyelashes.  Someone really attractive had been listening. 

It wasn't hard for Jim to get back into the conversation, and Gill said genially after a few minutes, "Jasper and I have to be getting along to this terribly boring party of mine, full of aging professors.  Care to come along, either of you, and inject some youth and energy into it?" 

Jim glanced sidelong at the girl - Ruth \- and found her glancing at him too. "I'd like that, Professor Gill, thanks," he said. 

"Oh, yes, how lovely," came her soft voice, like an echo. 

They went with Jasper Whatever-his-name-was and Professor Gill to the party, which was up in Berkeley.  The aircar belonged to Gill, who drove it himself, and Jasper Whosis sat in the front passenger seat while Jim and Ruth shared the back, flirting with their eyes but saying little.  The car was full of shadows as they flew over the Bay Bridge, its lights and their running lights flashing across the waves below.  Then later, Jim pointed out to Ruth where the pale tracings of roads wound up the steep hills between necklaces of light.  A harsh warm wind beat against the sides of the car, occasionally pulling it to one side or the other, but Jim knew from other rides that Gill was a good driver, and he tried not to be disturbed by the jolts of the air currents.  After all, the right sort of jolt left Ruth almost in his lap once.  And she didn't move away very far. 

Gill talked about the landscape too.  "The real reason to invent private aircars.  I remember riding in surface vehicles up those roads ... at this time of day, or when the weather was bad, it was a nightmare.  Now I think you said you'd never been to Berkeley, Jasper?  Not even to see the campus?  Why ever not?" 

"And you, do you know Berkeley?" Jim asked Ruth. 

"I was a student there," she said, "but now I work at the SerChemo labs.  I just go to a lecture or so around town to remember when I - " she chuckled - "when I spent my time _thinking_." 

He wanted to know her age but wasn't sure how to ask.  "It can't have been that long ago," he tried. 

"No, or I'd be over it, wouldn't I?" was all she said. 

He couldn't tell whether she was actually avoiding the implied question, or if she assumed he was older than he looked, or if it didn't matter to her, or if she was just plain not attracted to him.  But he didn't think it was that.  He helped her out of the car when they arrived at Gill's house - the carpad had a steep incline and he had noticed that she was wearing high heels - and she left her hand in his almost all the way to the house. 

He'd been to a couple of parties here before, and after they took off their coats and greeted Gill's wife, Jim took Ruth to the room Gill called his observation lounge, where the back wall was glass and a pair of sliding doors led on to a porch that overlooked what seemed to be half a mountain.  Gill, or perhaps his wife, had found a reconditioned string of electric lights in pale flowery colors, and they hung across the porch.  If the night were warmer, the guest bar might have been out there, but in this wind that would have been absurd.  As it was, the lights swung so violently Jim didn't know how long they'd last. 

Gill had been exaggerating about the guests all being old.  Besides Jim and Ruth, there were several graduate students, who all seemed to have bought their fashionable clothes in the same place, or perhaps all History and Philosophy majors had the same favorite colors:  long tunics and narrow leggings in red and navy blue predominated.  Even their haircuts were similar, which Jim expected on the Academy grounds but found disconcerting in civilian surroundings.  He turned gratefully to Ruth with her long blonde hair and her simple, pale jumpsuit cut close to her body.  But she was talking to Jasper again. 

He mingled a little, and the graduate students were all right - he'd met a few of them before - but he kept returning to Ruth.  At one point she asked him to find her a soft drink, as she had never made it out of the observation lounge and didn't know where the guest bar was.  When he got back, she was listening kindly to the oldest man there, an Emeritus professor whose hearing enhancers were never adjusted quite right, so he tended to talk on and on since he couldn't hear anyone else properly anyway.  Jim handed her the drink, feeling that he had somehow inherited all the chores of being her date without any of the pleasures.  The old man, Dr. Karpathy, went on talking about why Earth's Stoics and Vulcan Surakians were actually not significantly similar, despite the mistaken arguments of some of his colleagues.  He began to summarize the greater part of what must have been a lengthy book on the subject, or perhaps it only seemed long because of Karpathy's running commentary on its various fallacies. 

Fortunately, one of Karpathy's oddities was that he seldom looked directly at the person he was lecturing, and Jim leaned over and said into Ruth's ear, "You're taking what Professor Gill said too seriously," and then moved back just in time as the old man's head swung around and he actually asked a question.  "Oh, yes, I do agree," said Jim blandly, resisting the temptation to say 'cock-a-doodle-doo' or something to see whether Karpathy would notice.  Not a very nice thought. 

"What do you mean?" Ruth asked him when Karpathy had turned his face away again. 

"Look around.  It's not really our sole responsibility to be the youthful lives of the party."  He tried his best you-know-you-want-what-I-want grin and said, "We could even leave, and I bet the party would keep rolling along just fine." 

"And - oh, _yes,_ Professor - and how did you plan to get back to town?" 

"Leave that to me," he said, "I've met a lot of the people here, there must be somebody ... yes, I see her now.  Excuse me," and Jim wasn't in the mood to wait; he reached out and tapped Karpathy on the arm.  "Professor, I'm taking my girl away now, you're just too fascinating," and maybe the old man could read lips or something after all, because he grinned. 

"Lovely couple," he said. "Have a good evening." 

And Jim swept Ruth off with his arm around her waist as if they were dancing, and she began to laugh helplessly. 

"Oh," she said, "oh, you're not much like I thought." 

"Well, you haven't had much time to think yet, have you?" 

"Neither have you, and you just called me 'my girl.'" 

Jim stopped;  the rest of the room seemed to stop too, as he looked into her uplifted eyes, as wide as the sky.  "We'll ... have to talk more about that," he said slowly. 

"Yes," she said.  "Jim."  Her gravity and sweetness rang in him like a bell. 

After a few more moments he could finally look away, and spotted Lillian Martin again, still standing glumly near, but not in, a group of animated graduate students, holding a plate of refreshments but not eating them.  He took Ruth to her and turned her away from the group with a hand on her shoulder.  "Lillian, how are you?" 

She looked at him under level brows.  "Just great, Jim.  Just _WON_ derful.  The time of my life, I'm having here." 

"How _is_ Zelda?" 

"Debating something I can't follow.  Go ahead and join them, you can probably get it." 

"Please.  We just got away from Karpathy.  Lil, this is Ruth.  Ruth, my friend Lillian, who has gotten me through a few of these parties before." 

"Why do you come here if you don't like it?" asked Ruth, which was sensible enough. 

"I like Gill," said Jim. 

"I like Zelda," said Lillian.  "My girlfriend.  Right there, in red and blue." 

"Black hair," Jim added helpfully. "You know, the long tail there down her back, with the beads on the end?" 

"The taller one?" asked Ruth doubtfully. 

"With the nose ring. She's doing this 1990s thing.  They all are."  Lillian sighed. 

"Could be worse," Jim said, and waited for her to look.  "Could be 1890s."  She didn't react right away, so he added, "Corsets?  You know?  Petticoats?" 

"I'm _thinking,_ " said Lillian dreamily.  He shoved her and she laughed.  "I'm sorry," she said to Ruth, "but Jim and I have known each other for a long time, and we just turn into ten-year-olds when we're together." 

Ruth said politely, "It's charming." 

"So," Jim asked Lillian, "when will Zel be ready to leave, you think?" 

"About three a.m., at a guess."  Lillian was joking, but she sounded more forlorn than amused.  Jim reflected that he never had liked Zelda.  But "Don't start," Lillian warned him now, so he didn't. 

"Did you drive up together?" he asked instead. 

"No, actually, we arranged to meet here." 

"Lil," he said, leaning in a little, "what if we just ... Ran Away?"  The drama in his voice was for humor, but he knew she realized he meant the suggestion seriously. 

"Lillian and Jim run away together?" she asked, smiling. 

"And Ruth," Jim said, reaching for her.  She was just looking back and forth between the other two as they spoke. 

"Ah, I see," Lillian said.  "Ruth and Jim run away together with Lillian as the chauffeur." 

Well, he had sort of thought that - of getting a ride from her, anyway.  Now he would have been ashamed of himself, except that her eyes were twinkling.  "Let's find another party.  Hell, let's find an ant farm or an aquarium.  Grass to watch growing." 

"Too wet, don't you think?" asked Ruth, and he checked, but thought she was joking. 

"Let me at least try to get Zel to come," said Lillian. 

"I'll get our coats," said Jim, and Lillian cast him a grateful look.  She never had gotten used to the Gills' transcloset. 

"Mine's the same," she said.  "Zelda's is a navy velvet cape." 

Jim hoped the closet wasn't full of them. 

Lillian had a whole comic riff on the possible contents of the Gills' transcloset and why they had a storage system usually reserved for costume collections, but when Ruth asked Jim, he just said, "I guess they entertain a lot," which was true enough. 

The console for guest retrieval was near the front door, and Jim asked Ruth for the best search terms.  "Hm, try the color," she said, "quilted silk."  He put in 'pink' and didn't get it, and then she said "Peach," and that did it. 

He typed in 'black leather' next, for Lillian.  It wasn't really animal skin, of course, but the simulation was so close that the closet wouldn't be able to tell.  For a wonder, there were two leather garments - hmm, more in the main collection, the screen said.  Maybe there was more truth to Lillian's jokes than he'd thought.  He typed in 'pewter' for the studs and chains and 'red silk' for the lining and slashed sleeves, and got the right one.  "Oh, my," said Ruth when it appeared on the rack. 

Jim grinned.  The jacket was a relic of Lillian's brief flirtation with the neoleather life, which she admitted later had in her case been much more about fashion than sex.  "She says it's sturdy," he said now to Ruth. 

Jim's own jacket was an easy find, since he was the only Starfleet cadet at this particular party.  But he'd been right to be apprehensive about Zelda's cloak, and they were still hopelessly looking at visual displays when Lillian appeared.  Alone, and wet, as if a drink had been poured over her.  The cloak question could be shelved, Jim thought. 

"Let's get out of here," said Lillian, stone-faced.  "The Gills know." 

They piled into Lillian's little flitter and careened off down the hill, sticking near to the ground to avoid the wind and near the road to find their way.  Ruth, in the back, reached forward and clutched Jim's shoulder, digging her nails in whenever Lil swooped around a loop in the road or jumped a ridge. 

"Lil," said Jim after a minute or two, "would you like to talk about it or would you rather - " he gasped as they took a turn and Ruth, he swore, drew blood, " - just slalom?" 

Lillian made a strangled, whooping sort of sound, and he said, "Lil, Lillian, set it down, please, Lil, please don�t drive and cry at the same time," and Ruth dug her nails in again.  Lillian dropped to the side of the road and killed the engine, and dropped her head against her fists clenched on the controls. 

"I'm sorry - " she gasped, "I'm sorry ... I n-, I nev- ... never cry ...." 

"Lil, I don't care.  Cry all you want now," Jim said, pulling her nearer hand away from the altitude lever and holding it.  It was true he'd never seen her do this.  He chafed her hand between both of his and she sobbed, her face turned away.  He rubbed her shoulder too. 

Eventually she said, "I'm sorry" again. 

"Zelda's going to be sorry if I ever catch her," Jim said.  He waited a little longer and then asked, "Should I drive?" 

"Let me," Ruth suggested, "and then you two can talk." 

Lillian sat unresponsive, shoulders still heaving. 

"Or don't talk," Jim said. 

Lil nodded.  They all got out of the flitter and changed places, Jim and Lillian in back and Ruth in front.  They lifted off a lot more smoothly.  Ruth was quite a good driver. 

"I've still got a shoulder for you," Jim told Lillian, "my BFG." 

"OFG," she gulped, "Stud."  It was an old abbreviated joke from their subspace squirt-message days.  She let him hold her then and sniffled into his chest. 

"Where are we going?" Ruth said at last, when they were back in the city and she had picked up the altitude to stay out of the way of ground traffic. 

"Your place," said Lillian.  Now she was sitting up and could speak almost normally.  "I'm OK, but I don't ... want to find another party." 

"You're going to tell Cleo, right?"  Jim insisted.  "Promise me."  Cleo was Lillian's room-mate, also a lesbian, and why Cleo and Lil weren't a couple was one of the mysteries of life as far as Jim was concerned.  Cleo would make sure Lillian was all right, or as close as possible. 

"OK.  I promise." 

They pulled up in front of a 22nd-century rebuilt rowhouse with a light-stripped exoskeleton, and again they all got out of the flitter.  Both women seemed embarrassed;  Jim didn't know why.  _He_ was the one being dropped off he-had-no-idea-where, but both Ruth and Lillian seemed to be assuming he'd stay, and he certainly had nothing against the idea if he knew Lillian was going to take decent care of herself.  He gave her another hug and pinched her cheek gently.  "My _best_ friend-girl," he said. 

"You're a sweetheart, Jim."  She got into the flitter and lifted off, steadily and carefully. 

Jim only turned from watching her go when Ruth said, "Come inside for a while?" 

Why else was he there?  "Sure.  Thanks."  They walked up a little staircase and stood in front of a metal door formed and colored to look almost like it had panes of frosted glass in it.  Ruth got out a little keycard, narrow and pink and not shiny, like a little animal's tongue.  She swiped it through the lock, a motion like licking sideways, or maybe Jim just had a dirty mind. 

Inside, when the door swung shut behind them, it seemed completely dark.  Disorienting.  Jim just stood.  "The hall-light's out," said Ruth in a near whisper, and reached out, probably meaning to take his hand, but instead she grazed his hip and the tips of her small fingers hit him like a bolt of current.  He caught at the fingers and brought them to his lips. 

"You," she said, sounding a little surprised, "you don't waste time - do you?" 

"Too fast?" he asked, and kissed the ends of her fingers again, and then licked down to the top of her palm. 

"No," she said, pulling her arm in but not away, and they were against each other and even in the dark it wasn't hard to find her mouth below his. 

They kissed for some time.  The darkness wrapped around them made him not completely sure how long, or what was up and down, like floating.  They played shallowly with each other's mouths, licking and suckling and finding all the contours of lips and teeth and the edges of tongues.  She licked his upper lip and kissed up the bridge of his nose, finding his eyelashes and nibbling them with her lips, which felt strange to him but he supposed she liked it, so he did the same to hers.  That felt nicer but it was never going to be a big turn-on for him.  But he found her neck, and that was much better, and she stretched it out for him and made little sounds in her throat while he fed there.  He didn't think she was actually speaking.  Anyway he wasn't paying attention. 

Then he hit the neckline of the jumpsuit, and couldn't find how it was fastened.  He began to feel around for the break in the fabric a little frantically, and she said, "OK, stop," and he slowed down but kept his hands on her body, his hard-on nudging her and his face against her skin. 

"You've got an apartment?"  he asked, then nibbled her neck a little. 

She wriggled, but not hard, a token struggle.  "A suite.  Upstairs." 

"Can we go there?"  He stroked her hips and ran one hand up to her breast. 

"Yes, come on," she said, capturing that breast-fondling hand and holding it as she turned away and moved unerringly into blackness. 

"Isn't there _any_ light?" 

"Upstairs," she said again.  "Here's the railing," and she put his hand onto it.  This brought his arm across her body and so they paused for a while as he pulled her into him and found her breasts again and kissed her hair and ear and - she turned her head - her mouth. 

She was kissing back but she also laughed, the sensation strange against his lips, and he pulled back, a little miffed.  "Come on," she said, and then from the next stair up, "Have you lost the railing?" 

He found it again and followed.  She seemed to keep a step or so ahead, and he reached out with his free hand and brushed her hips, and she disconcerted him by laughing a little again. 

"It's funny?" 

"I'm so _horny,_ " she said, breathless, "and I'm _not_ having sex on the staircase, it's too silly."  She quickened her pace and so did he. 

They reached the top of the stairs, and there was a light in this hallway, though not a very bright one.  She went about halfway down the corridor and fiddled with the door, and rattled what sounded like a knob, and then at last they were inside.  She turned on the light. 

The room was full of boxes and papers and objects jumbled together on almost every surface. 

"Are you moving in or moving out?" he asked. 

"In," she said, and then " _Come_ in," and he shut the door behind him as he obeyed. 

Now that he looked, he couldn't see why he'd missed the opening on the jumpsuit, or perhaps she'd started that gap at the top while they were on the stairs.  Now she put her hands there, at mid-chest, and simply opened the length of the thing, hands skimming down her body as she did, and under it she was naked except for panties.  She wasn't strip-teasing, she was just getting out of it, and she was the most erotic thing he'd seen for a long while.  Her breasts jiggled as she bent over to pull the legs down, and looking at the line over her shoulder he realized why there were so many paintings of women washing themselves and dressing and so forth.  The paintings weren't a turn-on but she sure was.  The little dents along her spine and her round hips and her soft arms ... She looked up. 

"Are you just going to _stand_ there?" 

He stripped out of his uniform as fast as he could. 

The bed was assembled and made up, in fact too made up for his taste, with several pillows and a decorative coverlet and a featherbed or a down thing, all puffy and crowded.  She scattered the stuff from the surface of it, though, and when he joined her under the covers there was enough room for both of them, even with the hard-on he was swinging around by that time.  Her ass as she'd climbed into bed was made for his hands, but he wasn't close enough to grab it.  Later, he told himself. 

She ran her hands over his skin, holding him off just a little, and he murmured an inarticulate protest. 

"Oh, you are - " she said, "you are such a big, sweet, broad-shouldered -" her palms swept over them - "beautiful, unhairy - " her hands across his chest, where actually there was _some_ hair - "muscle-y - " her fingers played across his belly, and lower, and slowed, and he groaned - "eager big, big _boy_!"  She grasped his erection and held it, sliding her hand down to the base and up to the tip several times, and he was thrusting a little but trying to get his hands on her thighs, positioning her on her back and tickling her pubic hair, separating her, finding her wet - "Yes, please, stroke me, make love to me, yes, use your fingers, there, in my cunt!" 

He hadn't thought he liked talkers before, but this was getting to him in a big way, and he really had to tense up, hold back, to do what she wanted him to.  Both hands there as she stretched her legs apart, running his fingers in the rough hair and the slick juices, the backs of his hands chafing her soft thighs, and she arched her back and writhed and gabbled, "Oh, that's good, that tickles, again there, yes, oh, inside, please," but instead he teased around the edges, round and round until she was wild, bucking, down to ooohs and aahhs, and then he pushed his cock in.  She was wet as a sponge, moving under him, and he held her hips, lifting them from the yielding mattress, and plunged in and pulled out, and again, and again.  It felt so good.  And she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him half down and arched half up so she could kiss him, deeper this time, her slim tongue moving into his mouth.  He sat up more and pulled her closer and they rocked back and forth with her in his lap and his cock deep inside her.  She got her legs under her enough to pull up and push down, and she took up the rhythm of his thrusts, moaning into his mouth.  Her back was damp and her hair spilled over both their shoulders as they rocked back and forth.  He couldn't stop, he wanted to go on but he was past the point where he could control and he tipped her down again and pushed in hard and came, and she moaned again and clamped down as if she wanted to milk his cock dry or keep it inside her even after it was soft. 

He lay on her but she was still squirming under him, and he realized she hadn't gotten off.  "Sorry," he said, and then, "tell me ..." amazed that she wasn't already telling him. 

"Feel me," she said, "fuck me," and he couldn't do it with his cock now but he got up on one elbow rather dizzily and used his fingers instead.  The wet, clingy skin inside her was amazing to touch, and she was flushed and gorgeous as she twisted and arched, trying to get the best stimulation.  He had two fingers in her;  he tried separating them and pressing against the sides of the passage, and she gasped, "up, _up,_ " kicking her free leg aimlessly, and so he moved them the other way, turned his hand sideways.  He thought he should do something with her clitoris as well, but he was leaning on his other arm and wasn't sure how he'd do it, and anyway she seemed to be coming now, grunting, "Y's, yes, yesss," and the muscles around his fingers convulsing.  He kissed her mouth while she was quiet and limp and pulled her soft body to rest against his. 

"Oh," she said softly, "you are _darling,_ " and hugged him back. 

They rested a little.  Then she asked, "Jim?" 

"What?"  He was a little surprised that she wanted conversation, but given how much she'd talked while they were fucking, he probably shouldn't have been. 

"What does BFG mean?" 

"What are you - oh," he said, remembering he'd called Lillian that in the flitter.  "What made you think of that _now_?" 

"I don't know, I just wondered.  Is it private?" 

"No."  He paused, sorting out the story.  "OK, Lil and I go way back.  And while she was on Mars and then when I was - off Earth for a while - anyway, we were friends, and I called her my 'best friend-girl,' you know, as opposed to 'girl-friend.'  Abbreviated BFG, to save space in the squirt message." 

"And then she said OFG," Ruth said. 

"Yes, well, she used to answer 'I'm your only friend-girl, you big stud.'" 

Ruth laughed a little. "You two are funny together." 

"Always have been."  He wasn't speaking very clearly. 

"Are you going to sleep?" she asked. 

"'S it OK?" 

"Yes, all right, for a while."  She snuggled in.  "I'll drive you back to the Academy." 

"Thanks." 

"It's only fair."  She smiled against his skin.  "You got me a ride from Berkeley." 

He would have chuckled, but he didn't have the energy.  He wondered if they'd really get back to the Academy before morning.  He didn't want to bother.  A bed like this could feel like home ... and he thought he could get used to it, if she could. 

They'd see.  
  


	2. Rain Check

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk's adventures, junior year at Starfleet Academy, making friends with Gary Mitchell.

*********  
**October, Jim's Junior Year, continued**  
*******

Jim's office/carrel was already small, and when Mitchell swaggered in for the appointment about his Ethics paper, it suddenly seemed _much_ smaller.  Jim realized that if he didn't seize control instantly, this could be an all-around ugly experience.  "Ensign Mitchell," he said crisply.  "Sit down.  I'll just be a moment." 

Mitchell dropped into the chair as if by reflex, then crossed his legs and leaned back in it, a good trick considering that in fact it was impossible to sit comfortably there. 

Jim made him wait while he finished writing a note about something he wanted to point out in the next class.  Then he looked up and found Mitchell smiling at him with a kind of pure pleasure he found disconcerting. 

Somehow Jim couldn't play games.  He decided to take a leaf from Ben Finney's book - something like what he'd said when Jim had asked him for advice.  "What would you say is the purpose of the Ethics class?" 

Mitchell hesitated.  Then he grinned and opened his mouth, but evidently thought twice and shut it again without making whatever crack he had planned. 

"Thank you," Jim said, not pretending he hadn't seen it.  "I'm serious.  If you tease me in one paper, that's not important;  but if you miss what the class is meant to give you, it's my failure as well as yours.  So if you really think Ethics is a joke, tell me why." 

Mitchell sat forward now, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking at his hands clasped between them.  "It's so abstract," he said soberly.  "I can't think like that." 

"Well, I'm sure you _can_ ," said Jim, "but anyway it doesn't have to be abstract, that's why we're applying it to specific decisions." 

"So years from now, I'm looking down the nose of a Klingon cruiser, and I'm supposed to think about _Spinoza_ before I fire the phasers?" 

"Transform passion into action," Jim said, a paraphrase, and smiled in spite of himself. 

Mitchell shook his head.  "Sorry, Captain Kolonik, I realize now that my sadness is not externally caused and that you are as much a part of the great God/Nature as I am, so go right on raiding the outpost." 

"Captain _Colonic_?" Jim laughed.  Then got hold of himself.  "No.  Look.  Ethics isn't being all passive and goody-goody.  I'm doing it wrong if I've made you think that.  But . . . "  He thought of Kolos and turned his mind away, but the memory lent passion to his voice as he spoke.  "You've got to have _reasons_ for action.  You can't just act out of whatever's floating around in your mind;  you can't pretend you've got a real philosophy if it's just prejudice;  you can't just follow orders mindlessly.  I don't believe that's what they want from us.  I won't believe that." 

"No," said Mitchell almost fondly, "you wouldn't.  You're an idealist." 

Jim started to object and then stopped.  Anyway this wasn't about him.  "So write about _that_ ," he said.  "Tell me - listen, forget philosophizing a common decision.  Tell me about the way you really do make decisions.  The practical way.  Explain it to me." 

He'd been really communicating with Gary \- with Mitchell.  He knew it. ; But now Mitchell's expression changed, and it was like a door slamming in Jim's face.  "The way I make decisions," he said in a bleak voice.  "You mean, the way the _other_ other half lives.  The unidealistic half." 

Now what?  Jim didn't know.  He could only go on being honest and hope that would get through.  "You know I didn't mean to denigrate you.  I need a paper from you that shows you've been thinking about these issues, that demonstrates practical ethics.  Decision making.  Because that's what the class is about." 

"Does it have to be a decision I make?" 

"What, are you going to analyze one of mine?"  Jim smiled, but felt very little humor.  That idea was more unpleasant the longer it was in his mind. 

But, "No," Mitchell said, seeming a little startled.  "No, I wanted to . . . do some research.  I'm not exactly sure yet - can I tell you later?" 

"Not much later, please." 

It was the same afternoon.  Jim got a text message from Mitchell, proposing a research paper on the equitable scoring of Starfleet Academy entrance exams.  Jim agreed to the topic and a week later the paper was in his hands.  And it was entirely serious, and very good. 

"I learned from this," Jim told Mitchell when he handed it back. 

"So did I," said Mitchell simply.  "I hadn't thought about scoring as a system.  What you were saying, right?"  When Jim smiled, Mitchell did too.  "Uh-huh."  Then he sobered, looking away.  "I only wish I'd known about it before \- before I got here.  I'd have . . . made some different decisions.  Known who to trust."  Jim didn't know what he meant, and Mitchell obviously wasn't going to explain, but when he looked up again, there was at least humor there.  "Hey, I'm trying to say you're a good teacher.  And I learned something." 

"My pleasure," said Jim. 

"Hope so," said Mitchell, smiling, meeting Jim's eyes again. 

Time didn't stop.  The class period went on normally, and Mitchell didn't suddenly turn into the perfect student, either.  But weeks later, whenever he thought of Mitchell, it was that unguarded smile Jim saw in his mind, like a reference picture in a database.  
  

*********  
**December, Jim's Junior Year**  
*******

Jim saw Ruth when their schedules allowed \- not much during the last month of the semester.  When he thought of her, which was often, especially when he lay in bed at night or in the morning, he had dozens of little glimpses of her in his mind: her face in repose and amusement and arousal, the back of her neck when she wore her hair pulled up, the shape of her body against the light, her gesture as she pushed her hair back or reached for his hand or came close and looked up for a kiss.  The way she let her arms and legs go just anywhere when he was finger-fucking her.  The way her throat looked, stretched out, when he glanced up from licking her.  The way her face changed while he rode her to orgasm. 

Yet - it was strange - he kept thinking of Mitchell at odd times, laughing at something and wondering if Gary would think it was funny, hearing a Garylike tone in someone's voice, walking on the Academy grounds and catching a glimpse of someone that might be Gary, but wasn't.  Once the resemblance was so close Jim caught up with the other cadet before he realized he was looking at a stranger.  And even off campus - in a restaurant or on the street - suddenly Jim thought he saw Mitchell and turned and looked, and it never was, and Jim never learned. 

It was going to be a relief to go home for the winter break, if he could leave that behind, though it was hard to go away from Ruth when they'd had so few weeks as a couple and so little time together lately.  He called her the night before the flight to Iowa was scheduled;  his suitcases were already sitting by the door of his dorm room.  After some chat, Jim said, "I'll miss you.  I'll call you from home, OK?" 

"I'm staying with some relatives for the holidays," she said.  She pulled a long curl that lay over her shoulder, and let it spring back, and then did it again. 

"For how long, which days?"  He was leaning toward the screen, he realized, and sat back.  "Call me on Christmas Day?  Or anytime." 

"I'll call," she smiled.  "And I got your present.  Thank you, I love them.  Lilac and rose!  My favorite scents.  I'll burn them and think of you." 

"Well, they're not very seasonal, I guess. But as long as you're thinking of me."  He grinned at her, thought of holding her, said, "I'd rather remind you personally." 

She reached out and put just the tips of her fingers on the screen.  "When you get back," she said softly. 

He'd barely cut the connection when he got an incoming call, and it was his mother.  "Jim," she said, half distracted, "Jim, honey, I have bad news." 

He swallowed, mind racing, and said, "What?" 

"Mom," she said, "my mother, Grandma, she's been working at the Seattle Cultural Exchange, you know, and she got some weird fever thing, and she didn't even _tell_ me right away!  I didn't know 'til now and she might have _died_!" 

" _Mom,_ " he said.  "Mom." 

She closed her mouth and took a deep breath.  "OK."  Another one.  "Sorry, honey.  She's been really sick.  They had to bring in somebody from Starfleet, actually: it's one of those offworld things.  And she and practically everyone she's ever met was in quarantine.  But now that's over.  She's still weak, though.  She shouldn't be by herself . . . she needs me. And, honey, it's awful, you'll be alone . . . " 

"Don't worry about me, Mom.  Really.  I'll call the dorm people.  I'll just stay here." 

"Would you rather?  You could come home anyway, would you like that?" 

Jim thought about kicking around the empty farmhouse, practically snowed in, alone.  "I'd rather stay here," he said honestly, "since Sam and Aurelan aren't there either, but what about the horses?" 

"Kevin will board them for us.  He's got space now." 

"And he'd do anything for you, Mom," he teased.  Their neighbor's crush on his mother was a running joke in the family. 

She just wrinkled her nose at him and then frowned anxiously again.  "I _wish_ there was room for you in the Seattle house." 

"There's not.  I understand.  Hey, I can get really caught up, staying here." 

Her eyes narrowed.  "You're not really caught up?  Oh, Jim, I don't believe you." 

He grinned.  "You're right."  She rolled her eyes.  "Um, I can get started early.  I can - " he told her the real reason - "I can spend some serious time with my girlfriend.  Ruth." 

"Ruth."  A patented Mom moment.  She meant, 'who is this person?  Are you serious about her?  Why haven't I heard her name before?  Will I like her?' 

"Yeah."  He smiled.  "Ruth."  He wasn't ready to answer those questions yet. 

And twenty minutes later, when he had talked to Ruth again, he was less ready to answer them than ever.  Ruth had been standoffish.  No, she couldn't see him tomorrow:  she was working late.  No, she was leaving town herself in only a few days, and would be away until New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.  "You didn't say it was such a long visit," Jim said.  But now he came to think of it, she hadn't said it was a short one. 

"Well, that's how long it is," she answered, sounding a little irritated.  "It's all arranged."  Then, just as he was feeling like a teenaged fool, tagging after an older woman, she sighed and softened.  "Jim, darling, I'm just so frustrated.  I _want_ to see you more.  I _wish_ I was going to be in town.  Look, I'll call.  I'll call every night." 

The whole conversation left an odd taste in his mouth.  Afterwards he sat looking at the suitcases, knowing he should unpack them but not very interested in doing it.  But if he didn't, what would he do? 

He went for a walk. 

There was practically no one around.  He supposed a lot of people had left already, or were just indoors.  Digging his hands into the pockets of his jacket, he walked through the Academy gardens as if he were doing some sort of assignment, stalking along the paths and across the little footbridge, in and out of the pools of light left by the big Japanese lanterns hovering over the bushes and pruned-down trees.  It was just barely  foggy, and every lantern had a shimmering halo around it.  He slowed down.  It really was pretty. On the second footbridge, he stopped altogether and looked for the koi, but they must have been asleep.  He stood for a while, watching the light dance on the surface of the water as the breeze moved it. 

Then the movement of the water changed, and he heard a pattering on the leaves of the trees, and then felt the same rhythm on his head, the nape of his neck, and the backs of his hands.  It was raining. 

He still didn't want to go back to the dorm, and didn't want to think about what a bad omen that was for the rest of the break. 

The campus pub was closer anyway. 

It rained harder and harder, stroking the hair down against his scalp, tapping his shoulders through his shirt and jacket.  He ran for a while, but then walked again, realizing that no matter what he did he was basically going to end up wringing wet.  Scents rose from every bank of greenery he passed, evergreen here and some green spice there, and petunias, and marigolds, and wet cedar chips.  In Iowa, he'd only smell the humidity in the air like this in summertime, or anyway no earlier than March or April.  He enjoyed the smells, but the wind struck cold once he was wet.  And he was soaked through by the time he reached the pub.  As he stood dripping inside the door he found that the bartender had put out a stack of soft recycled-fiber towels for people to use.  He wiped down his hair and face and, once his jacket was hung up, squeezed as much water as he could out of the shoulders of his shirt, then tossed the towel into the barrel with the other used ones and went to the bar. 

The wind had chilled him so that he ordered the seasonal special, called wassail but basically a hot fruit punch, no alcohol.  He got the tall glass mug, garnished with a Christmassy-looking green sprig of something he hoped wasn't poisonous - so few people knew this stuff and somebody might think eating it was funny - and carried it away from the bar.  The pub wasn't crowded but it was busy enough to have a comfortable hum of voices and occasionally laughter in the background, which beat being alone.  A couple of people he knew looked up as he passed and waved or smiled, but they were all involved in the groups or couples they'd come in.  He stopped at the jukebox on his way to the booth near the door where he liked to sit, especially when he was here alone, and chose a couple of recordings with nice saxophone riffs in them. 

About to sit down, he reached up to change the angle of the lampshade so the light wouldn't glare in his eyes, when he heard a familiar voice saying, "Whoa, huh," and looked up to see that yes, this time it really was Gary Mitchell.  He was as wringing wet as Jim had been, and now stood shaking his head and his hands to scatter the water everywhere.  Had the rain stood out in beads in Jim's hair too, or was it the spiky shortness of Gary's that let it do that?  And on his face.  And - Gary looked down at his wet shirt, then up at the bar - raindrops spangled in his eyelashes, catching the light like glitter.  Jim was frozen, body suspended above the table, for the time it took Gary to wipe his eyes, then down his face, then see the towels and reach for them.  Jim wanted to tell him to let the rain stay, but smiled to himself instead and sat. 

Perhaps it was the movement that caught Gary's eye:  when he had dried himself and come in, he stopped beside Jim's booth.  "Lieutenant Kirk," he said. 

"Oh, the class is over," said Jim.  "Don't call me Lieutenant." 

"What then?  Cadet?  James?" 

"Not if you're being friendly.  Jim." 

"Jim."  He smiled.  "I see you got caught in the rain too." 

"Oh, yeah.  I'm just sitting here dripping and trying to warm up." 

Gary gestured toward Jim's wassail, an unusual sideways swipe of his whole hand that Jim didn't remember seeing before.  "That help?" 

"I don't know," Jim said.  "I just got here, so I haven't tried it yet." 

Gary examined it critically.  "I think I'll let you make this experiment." 

Jim looked again.  The liquid was cherry-candy red, an unlikely enough color even without the green sprig to set it off.  "The plant life is probably synthesized," he said. 

"Oh, _good_ ," Gary said.  "Now I'm completely reassured."  And then he paused just long enough, so that Jim had summoned up his bravado and picked up the mug to take a sip, and then Gary said, "Uh, Jim?  You don't drink the plant life part." 

Jim snorted, and set the mug down with a thud, and snatched his hand away as the punch splashed onto his knuckles.  It was still hot.  He was sure he wasn't really burned, but he shook his hand and glared at Gary anyway. 

"Look, are you at least going to sit down?" Jim asked, and immediately wondered if it was the right thing to do.  It was only a couple of days ago he'd still been Gary's instructor, after all. 

"Yes, _sir_ ," said Gary, dropping onto the opposite seat at once.  "Seated, sir!" 

"Rub it in," Jim said, not stopping to wonder whether Gary would know what he was talking about.  Gary's grin said Jim was right to take understanding for granted. 

It had been quite a while since Jim had had a friend like that, not counting Lillian.  And that was more important, surely, than the way the rain had hung on Gary's eyelashes, especially since Jim had a girlfriend. 

Some time later, Gary was still on the other side of the table, both of them dry now and in the middle of a fairly intense discussion of commercial-release holovids, of which Gary seemed to have encyclopedic knowledge and for which he apparently felt nothing but contempt. 

"OK, OK," Jim said at last, "But tell me, if Heintz and Mori and Patel are all so god-awful, why have you seen all their vids?" 

Gary hesitated, then smiled slowly, and Jim's breath caught a little but he didn't really think about it.  "Got to have something to talk to people about," he said at last. 

"Right," said Jim.  "Sure." 

"Sure," Gary agreed.  "Because, after all . . . if we weren't talking about vids, what would we be doing?" 

For a moment, the conversation could have turned, was about to be a pick-up, and Jim took a quicker breath and then sat back and got hold of himself.  He still couldn't allow himself to flirt with Gary Mitchell.  Bad idea.  Very bad. 

"Playing cards," he said firmly. 

Gary answered easily, "OK, right," as if he really had been asking for suggestions.  "Piquet?  Mao?  Centaurus?  Pinochle?  Tarock?  Cribbage?" 

Jim chose, "Cribbage, if there's a board." 

There was, of course, at the bar.  Gary was an uncanny card-player.  He shuffled with fancy bridges, the cards seeming to leap from hand to hand, and what he didn't plan for in the play wasn't worth scoring on. 

Jim needed some points badly, or he was going to be skunked, and he didn't want to let that happen.  He frowned down at his hand.  A four, a five, a six, a seven, an eight, and a jack.  Gary's crib.  Jim picked out two cards and counted;  a different two cards and counted;  stared at the whole hand again. 

"Hullo?  Jim?" asked Gary at last.  "Um, the whole fate of the universe doesn't exactly hang on what you throw into my crib." 

"Uh-huh," Jim said absently.  But it was time to give up;  there was no really _good_ throw;  he put in the seven and the eight, giving Gary two points. 

He thought.  When Jim had counted his hand (and gotten past the skunk hole, thank goodness) and Gary came to count the crib, he turned over the cards and had two sevens and two eights.  Twelve points. 

"It's like you _knew_ what I would put into it," Jim said. 

Gary shrugged.  "I’m good at guessing that kind of thing.  Fat lot of good it's ever done me." 

"You mean you don’t play for money?" 

"Oh, that, yeah, sometimes.  Poker."  He pushed the cards together, tapped the deck on the table to even out the edges.  His hands were graceful.  "Poker's work, not play."  He pushed the deck across the table for Jim. 

"You've been playing with the wrong crowd."  Jim took the deck and shuffled it, just for the feel of the cards since the cribbage game was over. 

"What do you mean?"  Gary's voice was sharp;  Jim realized he'd done it again, sounded like the Ben Finneys of the Academy.  The wrong crowd.  He could have kicked himself. 

"I mean if you play with people who take it too seriously, it's not fun."  He made his voice ordinary, just answering the question. 

"Oh," said Gary.  He was watching Jim shuffle.  Jim was watching him watch. 

This, it dawned on him, was a mistake.  He put the cards down, surprising himself with the sharp sound they made hitting the table.  Gary's eyes flicked up.  "Well, _are_ we playing again?" asked Jim. 

"Don't you want to win one?" 

Nobody had ever had to ask Jim Kirk that twice.  "Sure," he said.  He shuffled again and dealt, eyes on his own fingers and the cards, glancing only when he really couldn't help it at the broad strong hands moving the pegs back to the beginning of the board, adjusting its position, resetting its timer, picking up the cards as Jim tossed them to him. 

"Why are you still here?" asked Gary as he moved cards around his hand. 

"Family thing," said Jim, "No room at the inn this year." 

Gary just looked, but Jim didn't want to explain.  "Sorry," Gary said, his voice the gentlest Jim had ever heard it. 

"You?" asked Jim.  They cut the cards. 

"I'm living near here."  Gary paused, then played.  "Eight." 

"Fifteen two," said Jim, and moved his peg. 

"Lucky seven." 

Something in Gary's voice alerted Jim, and he stared, and then said, "You knew I had it." 

Gary shrugged.  "Just a guess." 

"But you said you could guess things like that.  I bet you trust your guesses.  You gave me those points." 

Gary looked away. 

"Don't do it." 

Gary laughed a little, still looking out of the booth.  "I'm not very good at doing favors." 

"Do me this one," said Jim.  "Don't hand me stuff." 

"OK," said Gary, and paused, and then changed his tone.  "You know what I really can't guess at all?  Darts." 

"Let's do it, then."  And Jim reached over and took the cards from Gary's hand, pulled the ones lying on the table in toward him and pushed them together.  Gary took care of the board again, turning off the timer and pushing the pegs into their separate crannies.  They walked together to the bar and got the darts.  And Jim did win that game - fairly, he thought. 

Being carefully fair to each other was not the brightest prospect Jim could think of.  On the other hand, the semester break was certainly looking less bleak.  



	3. Party Like It's '99

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk's adventures, junior year, including New Year's Eve. Revised.

*********  
**December, Jim's Junior Year, continued**  
*******

After the night they played cribbage and darts at the campus pub, Jim ran into Gary fairly frequently;  then they began to arrange meetings - Jim still didn't know where Gary was staying for the semester break, but Gary could easily reach him through the Academy system, and did.  Jim did some research for next semester, puttered over some practice command simulations and studied his plasma physics and starship specs, which he could always use more time on.  When Ruth called - not every day - it was late in the afternoon, so Jim had most evenings free to spend with Gary. 

Jim liked Gary, his sense of humor, his charisma, his intelligence and the wide-ranging things he knew about. Every card game ever invented, it seemed like.  How the fasttrains worked.  Where to buy unusual things for not much money.  They both enjoyed running and boxing, and they were pretty evenly matched.  Gary, being taller, outreached Jim, but Jim was more agile.  They watched and discussed holovids, and Jim learned not to tease Gary about his fascination with them, since he never would admit to liking one. 

The campus pub couldn't keep them occupied for long, and they began leaving the Academy grounds to find a club or a game room.  Gary knew night spots off the beaten path, and Jim didn't ask how he found out which of them would serve probationary-drinking age customers. They never seemed to run into anyone Gary knew, though.  And Jim found out that Gary had a temper, but never could really tell what was setting him off.  One night when they were at a new holovid release, Gary just suddenly stalked out, and when Jim followed, wouldn't tell him why.  "If you have to _ask!_ " he said scathingly, and . . . well, Jim had needed to, so he just shut up.  At a bar one night, Gary went to get a second round of beers - the next thing Jim knew, Gary was shouting at the bartender, and Jim never found out what that was about either, though he had to drag Gary away before the bouncer threw them out. 

He never gave Jim points in anything again.  On the contrary.  When they ran together, Gary always had to be a few paces ahead, and when they boxed, his eyes were as flat as if Jim were a stranger, or even an enemy.  They tried unarmed combat practice together only once, and Jim found himself on his back, throat in Gary's hands - Jim's head knocked twice against the floor, connecting solidly even through the mat, and then Gary backed off as if he'd set a destruct sequence to go off right away. 

Jim rolled up on one elbow and coughed. 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Gary was saying from the edge of the mat, and Jim wasn't sure how often he'd already said it. 

"OK," he rasped out when he could.  "Bout over." 

"Yeah, sure - Jim, you're OK, right?  God, I'm sorry, you're really OK?" 

"Yeah."  But his neck and skull hurt for quite a while. 

On Christmas, of course, he didn't see Gary.  He did spend a lot of time at the computer, on and off, amusing his grandmother, who as an old-fashioned nethead loved to set up what they used to call a chatroom, and get friends and family into it.  Jim read, and tapped his keypad, and tried to keep it all straight in his mind, wondering why they couldn't just comm each other like normal people.  "Silver Terror," his grandmother called herself for the chatroom.  Jim wished he and Gary could laugh about that right now. 

He read/wrote: 

**silver terror says** it was Rigellian fever, one of u Starfleet types brought it here i spose  
**Winona56 says**   I don't think you've seen the guest rm since redecoration  
**silver terror says** funny, none of the xchange guests had it  
**JTiberius says**   Starfleet types?  *Starfleet* types?  
**Winona56 says** its a serious thing, mom, you could hv died  
**silver terror says** guest rm's the same tiny closet  
**Winona56 says** and you still can't climb the stairs I don't think yr fine  
**JTiberius says**   anyway that's serious, grandma, now dont run around doing too much  
**silver terror says** thought about taking a chunk out of my bedrm but the automated bed  
**Winona56 says** she just blames everything on starfleet Jim you know (g)  
**JTiberius says** grandma where are u sleeping if yr not going upstairs?  
**silver terror says** takes up too much space.  guess u coulda stayed in there 2  
**Winona56 says** actually we moved the guest bed down and Im in hers  
**silver terror says** but i bet yr happier where u are.  how's the girlfriend?  
**JTiberius says**   down the stairs?  Who?  
**Winona56 says** how are you Jim are you happy?  
**silver terror says** tell us about her  
**Winona56 says** mom's friends from the ex program, don't worry  
**JTiberius says**   I'm fine, mom, there are some other cadets staying and Im spending time w/ them  
**silver terror says** oh pshaw stop *worrying* I'm not silly yet  
**Winona56 says** isn't Lillian in town too?  
**JTiberius says**   Her name is Ruth but she's out of town for awhile  
**JTiberius says**   no Lil's not in town either for a few days  
**silver terror says** I knew her *name* but what is she like  
**Winona56 says** poor sweetie you said you'd be able to spend time with her!  
**Winona56 says** i'm so sorry  
**silver terror says** I remember Lil how is she?  
**JTiberius says**   I'll see Ruth when she gets back.  oh grandma how can I describe her?  Blonde, beautiful, sweet, nice voice, had enough yet?  
**Winona56 says** and Lil too!  I hope yr not lonely  
**JTiberius says**   Mom please cut it out, you had to go  
**silver terror says** it is a little much, doesn't she have some human error?  
**JTiberius says**   Lil was good the last time i saw her.  
**Winona56 says** sorry whenever i'm with mom she sucks up all the sarcasm in the air  
**silver terror says** i've bn *telling* yr mom to lighten up  
**JTiberius says**   human error?  Nope.  She's an angel.  Dimples.  
**Winona56 says** and i just turn into this limp rag.  I'll try to be better.  
**silver terror says** Dimples!  
**silver terror says** I ask you!  
**Winona56 says** she certainly sounds pretty  
**JTiberius says**   yes dimples, right around her mouth  
**silver terror says** whatever happened to that boy u used to go around w/?  
**Winona56 says** oh *mom*  
**JTiberius says**   don't sound so doubtful mom  
**Winona56 says** you're always teasing him  
**JTiberius says**   she's a tech at the SerChemo labs  
**silver terror says** the one with the irish name and the sense of humor  
**Winona56 says** MOM!  
**JTiberius says** FINNEGAN?  Grandma are you crazy?  
**JTiberius says** he beat me up!  
**Winona56 says** I think I told her, Jim, but i never said you were friends  
**silver terror says** u know what they say about repressed attraction  
**Winona56 says** much less a couple  
**silver terror says** yr just so soppy with girls, Jim  
**JTiberius says** Im nauseous, I'll be sick - Finnegan!  
**silver terror says** always have been  
**JTiberius says** youve gone so *beyond*, grandma  
**Winona56 says** & thats so bad for the keypad  
**silver terror says** (snort)  
**Winona56 says** sorry, don't know what came over me  
**JTiberius says** *mom*  - what was that about Grandma getting all the sarcasm?  
**silver terror says** look heres my real pt.  dont sit around feeling sorry for yrself,  
**silver terror says** find a new girl or a new boy and have a good time or i really am gonna feel guilty.  
**JTiberius says** no im too busy to feel sorry for myself  
**silver terror says** go out for Nyrs, k?  on the town, on me.  i'll send credits.  take Lil if yr really being faithful to ms dimples. 

The number of credits she actually sent seemed astronomical to Jim.  "Am I flying to Paris?" he asked when they were (finally) on the comm together.  She laughed, still not the full grandma-bray he'd been hearing his whole life, but obviously happy. 

"If you want, but then you really have to tell me all about it." 

"I'll ask Lil where she wants to go.  If she hasn't already got plans." 

Grandma wrinkled her nose, ordinarily the only part of her face that _wasn't_ wrinkled.  "Lil's the best you can do?" 

"I thought I might take out a group.  For this, I could take out half the junior class if they were here." 

She laughed again.  It really did bother him a little, how much she'd sent, but it obviously didn't bother her. 

He wanted to ask Gary.  Not as a date, as a friend. But all those credits, the extravagant time his grandmother expected him to have, were actually an inhibition.  He had a feeling that Gary's own family income wasn't too high, and he wasn't sure how to say, come to this expensive place with me and let me pay. 

Jim left a message for Lillian, to start with, knowing he could be completely frank with her:  "Grandma sent me untold wealth and told me to have a grand New Year's Eve.  And she says how are you.  And I say, what are you doing the 31st?  Got a date?  Decided a place?  Let me know." 

She caught him out too - one of life's unchanging verities, that people were never home to take the good calls.  "Lil here - I lost my date, remember?  But I still have a reservation at the Metreon's Reboot-Millenium bash, wanna go?  Bring your light-sensitive eye-shade, they've got technobeams and all, totally unmedically cleared, the same stuff they did in 1999.  Your grandma would love it.  Pity she can't come.  Shall we pick people up there or get someone lined up as a date beforehand?" 

"Yes," said Jim, perversely without explanation, in his return message.  "I will.  She would.  She can't.  Whatever.  Let's try to talk live, get the number straight, change the reservation." 

He left a more user-friendly message for Ruth, in case she did get back in time.  Now he had to find a way to ask Gary. 

He was still wondering how six hours later, sitting in the red-leather, brass-tacked, mirrored splendor of Gary's latest favorite bar.  He and Gary had picked up two women who had come to the bar together. They were sitting in a booth chatting and drinking wine, trying to be classy. 

"It's sour for a good white," said the one sitting next to Jim, looking at the glass she'd been sipping from.  She had introduced herself as Miss Jones and didn't seem very eager to share her first name, or her personal space.  Gary's girl, Sondra, was already snuggled up to him, taking up about half the booth seat for both of them.  Both girls' hair was straightened, but while Miss Jones wore hers down in a kind of pageboy against skin almost as dark, Sondra's was streaked with red and brushed up into a pompadour, from which a few shorter pieces of hair had come loose and were sticking out.  When she sat up straight, one of these obviously tickled Gary, and once it made him sneeze.  Jim would have laughed at that moment, but with his own Miss Icicle beside him he didn't feel in a position to tease Gary. 

"I want to see if they've got anything better," said Miss Jones now, and turned to Jim, now improbably kittenish and vulnerable.  "Come with me?  They might get mad." 

Jim didn't dare look at Gary, but let Miss Jones take his hand and tug him out of the booth.  At the bar, among colored lights and even more mirrors, she seemed to relax at last, and didn't even call the bartender over. 

"All right," he said after a moment, "what was that all about?" 

She looked sideways at him under long, red-tinted lashes.  Probably false.  "Sondra's my sister," she said, "my _big_ sister, and I just can't get comfortable with a man while she's watching." 

"Comfortable with a man," he repeated.  The phrase sounded so false. 

"Yes," she said, blinking slowly, then more quickly.  "I haven't . . . done this much before." 

Jim wasn't sure what made him look again, _really_ look, at the sharp jawline where the wing of black hair brushed it. . . the shape of the hands lying dark against the synthesized quartz of the bar . . . the bony wrists poking out of the soft fuzzy sweater. . . the long throat and its adam's apple.  Then, realizing she was trans, he thought about the uncertain body language and awkward joints, like a child's. "Look, how old are you really?" 

Miss Jones raised brown eyes gone wide and startled.  "Fifteen." 

"How did you think you'd buy wine? Or was I supposed to buy it?" He saw her embarrassment and went on, "I usually date people older than I am, but you're _so_ much younger . . . I'm sorry, I don't want to be a jerk, but." He shook his head. 

She shrugged. "I just wanted to practice, really. And I meant it about the wine." 

"Then let's call the bartender," Jim said.  He waved down the bar, and a man in a white coat nodded back.  Jim asked about fruit juices, and chose a mango for himself. Miss Jones wanted hers to look like a cocktail, so she debated mixes and garnishes with the bartender. For Sondra, they got a half-bottle with a heavy scent, like a fruit smoothie with perfume in it. The bartender called what they'd been drinking "tourist wine," and that amused Jim, seeing that it had been Gary who ordered it for them.  So he bought another glass of it for him. 

At their table, Jim said, "Miss Jones and I are drinking juice," right to the knowing smirk on Gary's face that said he knew now, if he hadn't known before. "And Sondra, here's what your sister got for you."

"Ooh," Sondra said as she smelled the bouquet, "Jackie!  My favorite!  Thank you, I didn't even know they had it!" 

"You've never learned the name of it," said Jackie Jones, gruffly but with a little smile. 

After that, conversation in the booth flowed more easily.  And Sondra sat about six inches away from Gary, so there was no more sneezing.  Jackie told them about wine, with extra information about the best vineyard tours, and it was actually interesting.  An hour or two later, Sondra gave her comm code to Gary, but insisted on seeing Jackie home.  Gary and Jim handed them into a cab - with a live driver, yet - and when Gary turned back to him, still shaking his head, something in his expression made Jim lean against the wall of the bar and grin even though he was irritated at the way he'd been dealt the underage girl. 

"When did you know how young . . . " Jim began. 

"Sondra with her candy wine? Barely probationary to drink it. And Miss was the younger."

Jim shook his head. "What if they'd checked us? I get checked all the time."

"For your angel face," Gary said, grinning but looking like he meant it, too. 

"Sure," but Jim's response wasn't jokey enough either. 

Later, on their way home, Jim suddenly realized he was staring at Gary's mouth, and decided that rather than jump him in the back of the muni on the narrow plastic bench seat (because he had a girlfriend, damn it), he might as well take the other plunge. 

"Hey, you want to ask Sondra out for New Year's Eve?" 

Gary asked, "What are you talking about?" 

"My grandmother sent me this . . . present, and she told me to take some friends out for New Year's.  Lillian, you know, I've mentioned her, she's coming, maybe with a date.  She chose the place.  The Metreon." 

"Your grandmother give a lot to charity?" Sharp, that voice, cutting, though it wasn't loud. 

"Mitchell . . . " Jim began, then realized he didn't really have anything in mind to say.  "Never mind.  Just a thought." 

They rode in silence for a while, the atmosphere so stiff that Jim thought even Miss Jones would have been a more comfortable companion. 

"Why did you ask me?"  Gary's voice was still angry. 

"Because I wanted to be with my friends at New Year's," Jim answered as simply as he could.  He was miffed himself, but held on to his temper, remembering that he had anticipated a reaction like this. 

There was another silence, though a shorter one. 

"I don't want to be a pig about it," Gary said at last, more calmly this time. 

"You're doing a fine imitation," said Jim, but smiled.  "And I'm a farm boy, so I know a pig when I smell one." 

Gary shoved him in the shoulder, almost exactly the way Jim himself might shove Lillian if she said a thing like that.  Jim relaxed, and ventured to say, "If you don't come and help me spend these credits, I'll have to buy Jackie Jones a pearl necklace to use them up." 

"And lie to your grandmother?" 

Actually, Jim thought his grandmother would find Jackie Jones very interesting, but he said to Gary, "So help me out." 

Another pause.  Nothing more Jim could do.  Gary would take the gift or turn it down. 

"I'll come, but I don't know about Sondra." 

"Good."  Jim was so relieved he reached out and caught at Gary's sleeve. And then, recovering, he let go and sat back at his end of the seat. "Good."  
  

*********  
**New Year's Eve**  
*******

The Metreon, from the outside, looked exactly like the kind of building that made people say, 'Oh, what a perfect 20th century survival!' though Jim never understood why that was wonderful.  This building looked blockish and unbalanced to him. The party being replicated \- sort of - was the 1999 gay ball called the Mondo-Millenium;  afterward the whole building would be available for public use except the big-screen flatvid thing, still being restored.  Lillian told Jim all this on the way there, but Jim just couldn't see what all the fuss was about. 

But he was surprised at the wild, almost alien curves and angles that met his eyes inside, and the way the glossy wood and the white plastic panels and the metal struts, pipes, and grilles went together in their daffy postmodern way.  And the air of excitement and pleasure that the whole crowd gave off was as intoxicating as the champagne that was just everywhere he looked.  He was handed a glass almost as soon as they got in the door and turned down two others while he was still carrying the plastic flute, nearly untouched. 

"I take it," he murmured to Lillian, "we're all supposed to be of age here." 

"Nobody asked me when I reserved the table," she said, clutching her date's hand as if she was afraid the girl would bolt into the crowd.  Sumiko, her name was.  Gary and Sondra were behind them. 

Jim hadn't, in the end, brought a date himself.  Maybe Ruth would come after all;  maybe he'd find another single person in the crowd milling in front of him; or maybe he'd just be with his friends, which after all had been the main point of the evening.  That, and spending Grandma's credits.  And that was easy.  The tickets alone had put a sizable hole in Grandma's credit chip.  And Lillian, when she revamped the reservations, hadn't skimped on anything. 

They had a table near the dance floor, an area called the Night Kitchen, the small stage for the live band towered over by huge cartoon characters dressed as chefs.  The dance floor was edged with all kinds of light equipment, and Jim really wanted to get a look at it, to see if it was really antique or reproduced, but nobody was allowed:  there were security staff members beside every installation.  The light itself was phaser-bright but intermittent, tied into the music somehow, changing color, flashing.  They could scarcely see the plates of old-style hors-d'oeuvres:  little sausages wrapped in pastry, tiny smudges of pate on crisp wafers, edible straws filled with some sort of soft cheese, and all sorts of other unlikely finger food.  Crayfish.  Snails.  The weirdest were little orange puff things - he thought they were orange - that when he pinched one, turned out to be the consistency of insulation foam.  None of it was anything Jim had ever eaten before, he thought, or if he had, it hadn't looked like that.  And the champagne just kept coming.  There was supposed to be non-alcoholic stuff somewhere but everything Jim tasted was . . . not non-alcoholic.  Which was, on the whole, OK with him. 

They'd hired the clothes they were wearing, and Jim had taken care to get fladvids of all of them as they milled around before leaving Lillian's place;  he knew that his grandmother would be dying to see them.  Lil was dressed warp-fast, in a short-skirted outfit with wild long fringe.  It was more 1920s than 1999, but Jim didn't have the heart to say anything.  Usually Lillian went more butch, and it was fun just looking at her with color on her eyelids and cheeks and earrings dripping from her ears.  She had to stop pulling on her neckline, though.  Jim made a mental note to tell her. 

Sumiko was wearing what would have been a formal kimono if it hadn't been so short, which made it look weirdly like an exercise wrap with trailing sleeves in too-gaudy silk.  Jim was grateful Zelda was still not among the mentionable.  He didn't even want to know what she would have looked like - or acted like, once she'd gotten wrapped around some of this champagne.  At least Sumi was friendly.  She kissed Lil's cheek when they got back from one of their dances, a gesture Jim couldn't remember Zelda making the whole time he'd known her.  Jim approved, though he was afraid moving too fast would spook Lillian. 

Sondra was draped in a lot of gauzy bits that kept threatening to simply float up and show whatever they were theoretically covering.  When Jim danced with her, a fast whirling kind of dance, he realized the whole dress was less precarious than it looked, which was sort of disappointing. 

Jim did a lot of dancing, a certain amount of talking, ate in a gingerly way if the stuff didn't seem too strange, and drank sparingly, not wanting to get sloppy in front of - well, anyone.  The hired clothes were another reason not to get out of control.  The shop clerk had said it was a tuxedo, but Jim had balked at the cut of the jacket and that sash thing, so he was just in shirt-sleeves.  He was glad, though he noticed that some other people were wearing the whole ensemble and it didn't look as ridiculous as he had thought.  But the room was warm despite its high ceilings and moving air, and he'd folded his cuffs back as it was and opened the collar. 

Gary had insisted on wearing his own, dark-colored, soberly cut clothes, and perhaps he'd meant to be unobtrusive.  Instead, the sheer understated sexiness of his snug half-sleeves and v-neck stood out against all their peacock colors and crazy styles.  Sondra kept running her hand along Gary's bare forearm, too, or playing with the hair at the back of his neck, so she obviously felt the outfit was a success. 

Late in the evening, when Jim and Lillian were just back from a dance set and everyone was disheveled and flushed, Lil turned to Jim with mischief in her face.  "You've danced with strangers, and you've danced with me," she said, enunciating carefully, "and you've danced with Sumi, and you've danced with Sondra, but you haven't danced with Gary."  She was standing behind Gary, and waggled his shoulder back and forth.  "It's very rude, isn't it, Gary?" 

Sondra looked on with a half-smile that Jim didn't quite like.  There was a pause of a few seconds, and then Gary said, "If you want to?" and stood, looking down at Jim as if he were the reluctant one. 

"Sure," Jim said. 

As they walked away from the table, Jim said, "OK, what's the hitch?" knowing there must be one. 

"I can't dance," said Gary.  "I never learned.  Sondra and I went up to that Wild Things place and just walked around there." 

"How did you get out of it?"  Jim asked.  "I would have given a lot at the time.  Even being homeschooled after . . . I was 14, even that didn't get me out of going to dance class." 

Gary didn't answer.  They walked together through darkness shot with glare, spots and flashes and lines of colored light moving away from and back to the improvised stage.  The windows from floor to ceiling on the patio-side pulsed with the reflections.  In the dark times blacklight found Jim's shirt and made him feel like a beacon.  Music shrilled, growled, shook their bones, and came up through their feet.  They stood at the edge of the dance floor to watch the gyrating bodies, not trying to speak.  The song stopped, and some people left the floor and others went on to it.  When the music started again, it was much more subdued, woodwind and drum and bell sounds.  Jim recognized it as an Andorian circle dance for pairs.  "Try this, it's just walking in a circle, I promise.  Come on, surprise Sondra." 

Again a pause before Gary said, "OK." 

Jim walked onto the dance floor and held out his hand to Gary.  "Like shaking hands."  And then as Gary's hand came to meet his, he caught it in both his:  "Hold my wrist, like this," grasping the handful of Gary's bone.  Jim let his other hand drop;  Gary's fingers closed around Jim's wrist, warm, and of course covering more skin than Lil's or the other women's.  "Now walk with the drum-beat," said Jim, raising his voice a little to carry over the sound, "and I'll tell you when we switch directions." 

The lights flashed and moved, increasing speed slowly, making everything throb in time with the music. "Don't look at your feet," said Jim, "please."  Gary raised his head, but his face was blank, as far as Jim could see it in the moving waves and lines of color.  His hand on Jim's skin was neutral too.  Gary had picked up the rhythm well - three steps faster, one slower, three faster again - and began at last to relax into the movement, so Jim did too, and smiled.  Gary's eyes flicked past Jim to the other couples dancing. "OK, change hands," Jim said. 

They did, with only a slight fumble, and walked in the other direction.  "Well, you're right," said Gary, "it is easy.  But we're not doing it the way the others are." 

"No," said Jim, a little embarrassed, "but I wanted you to get the hang of the steps first."  He slid his hand up Gary's arm now as they walked, and Gary did the same, as the other couples had already been doing, so that as they walked faster they also drew closer together.  Jim was very aware of the hair under his fingers, the smooth skin under his palm;  of Gary's hand, ruffling the hair on his own arm and warming his own skin;  of Gary's face and body nearer with every circle they walked. 

"Change hands," he said as he touched the crook of Gary's elbow. 

They did, back at the wrists again, and Gary smiled for the first time since they had left the table.  "I get it," he said, and this time he was the one to slide his hand along Jim's arm, just that little bit, then more, and Jim followed until they held each other's elbows and circled almost too closely to keep their steps apart.  In the dim colored light Gary's eyes were too dark to read, nearly too dark to see, but his pale skin was luminescent, and when he smiled, his teeth caught the lights in blue flashes, like Jim's shirt did. 

And again they changed hands, and again slid warm palms along each other's skin, and Jim remembered that Andorians considered this dance too intimate for anyone but life-partners and family members to do. 

Then as they were closest, the music stopped and the dance floor was almost completely dark.  Some couples, Jim knew without looking, were kissing;  some hugging;  some stepping quickly away.  He and Gary just stood, still gripping each other's arms, their faces only inches apart.  The lights came up, just normal yellow-white, and they had not moved. 

"This is the free-style part," Gary said, holding on, staring down at Jim.  "Right?" 

"Yes," said Jim. 

Gary touched Jim's face with the tip of one finger, and moved it across until he reached just the corner of Jim's mouth. 

Jim was not in control.  Usually he hated that.  If he had been in control, he would have pulled Gary's hand from his face;  he would have moved away and found a joking comment to make, something that friends said to each other.  He actually tried, but his hand wouldn't grasp, just rested on Gary's.  Gary was the one whose eyes moved, looking over Jim's head, and it was Gary who pulled away.  His finger left Jim's cheek;  his arm left Jim's grasp;  his body heat was gone. 

Jim couldn't be disappointed, could he?  It must have been the way Gary walked back through the crowd, faster than Jim expected, so that he didn't keep up and other people separated them.  In the new darkness and noise of the next dance, Jim told himself that he wasn't disappointed, he was just disoriented, and a little dizzy from the circling dance-steps and the champagne. 

He turned, peering, trying to get his bearings and go back to the table, but someone else grabbed him by the elbow.  A woman's hand.  A short woman, head tilted back, he couldn't see her properly, and then a spotlight ran past and Jim said, "Ruth!" 

"Jim, darling," he thought she said, and he put his other hand into her hair and kissed her.  It was like a dream, the dark and the music and her body flowing into his. Not real at all, and so he just fell into it, gathered her as close as he could and sank into her kiss.  He played his tongue over her teeth and under her tongue to tease her in that tender spot, and suckled her upper lip, and kissed down to her neck, and she rubbed his back, murmuring too softly to hear through the music. 

"I missed you, I missed you," he said into her ear, because surely that was what he was feeling.  She buried her face in his neck. 

The lights came up again, between sets, and Jim said, "When did you get here?" 

"I got your message when I got home, later than I really planned, and just dressed up and left again.  I wanted to be here at midnight." 

Jim looked down at her composed face, and played a little with her hair.  "I'm glad."  One hand fell to her shoulder.  "Come on, come and meet everyone." 

But she leaned back, and when he took her arm she still wouldn't move.  "Not right now, please.  I just want to be with you.  Isn't there somewhere . . . we can just walk around for a little while?" 

This reminded him of what Gary had said, so Jim answered, "There is, but I'm not sure . . ."  He turned and saw the passage into the main mall, and he and Ruth made their way out.  They could have just walked back and forth here, but it was hardly romantic, the lighting ordinary and the passers-by weighed down with trays and dirty dishes. So they stopped one of the zillion waiters and asked her the way up into the Wild Things place. 

"Oh, it's _darling!_ " Ruth said when they saw this child's daydream of a jungle.  Walkways arched up and around; strange beasts smiled fiercely from trapeze-like wires;  nothing was real.  The plastic leaves were large, muting even the pin-pricked lights of the city that reached through the vast dark windows. Jim and Ruth walked on flat green artificial turf past gnarled, garishly painted trunks twisting this way and that;  pillars and benches seemed to be made of blocks of stone, but were only more plastic, painted.  When they reached the ramped walkway, Jim put his hand on the rail and discovered that it was not real wood either.  They both looked around for a moment. 

"Cute monsters," said Ruth.  Then they climbed the ramp, farther into the shadows, holding hands at first but then with arms around each other's waists, ducking under artificial vines and dodging artificial tree-branches.  Just where the walk turned, they stepped into the far corner and could see the cityscape through the foliage;  they stopped to look and then to kiss, and Jim ran his hands over the body he was beginning to know so well. When he held her breasts like this she always moved closer, into his hands, and this time she moaned softly in her throat.  Still, after they'd necked and groped for a while she stepped away, took his hand again and pulled him back to the railed walk.  He followed, a little frustrated but not enough to make an issue of it.  They went to the end of the walkway, a little platform raised above the turf, also with a view of the city.  There they stood, Ruth's head on Jim's shoulder, and they might have been alone, but for the remote sound of the band and the crowd. 

Suddenly, a speaker somewhere above them coughed a little static and then amplified the voices chanting in the Night Kitchen:  "Ten . . . Nine . . . Eight . . . " 

Jim turned Ruth to face him, cupped her face in his hands.  "Almost midnight," he murmured to the full lips so near his. 

"Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Happy New Year!" shouted the speaker in many voices. 

Jim leaned in to kiss Ruth;  his eyes closed, and in the dimness of the false jungle it seemed the only light was the little sparkle behind his eyelids, a private version of the light show on the dance floor.  How soft her lips were, how wet and giving . . . it would be different with Gary . . . he banished the stray thought and pressed his tongue into Ruth.  Sweet, she tasted sweet and sharp together like the champagne punch.  The skin of her throat was smooth in his hands.  He passed his thumbs over the nearly-hidden lump of her adam's apple, and she swallowed reflexively.  He slid the thumbs up to her jaw, stroked up to her ears, back into her hair.  She pushed her body against him, rubbed a little back and forth, and just that easily he got hard, all the stimuli of hours focussed at last.  Her hands went down his sides, over his hips, back up to the waist of the rented pants with their old-fashioned zipper.  He leaned back a little, breaking the kiss, his hips forward, wild for those small fingers to find the clasp and undo the little metal tracks and . . . "Here?" he whispered, wanting to hear her say yes with her mouth, see it in her eyes, as well as feel it in those creeping fingers. 

And he was sure that she would, but it was someone else's voice, below their feet somewhere, that said "Yes . . . yes . . . " hoarsely, in a range that could have been man or woman.  Jim and Ruth both froze. 

"Now," said the voice distinctly, and it was definitely a man.  "Take me."  Jim pulled Ruth closer and bent his head to hide his snuffle of laughter in her hair. The other couple must be under the platform where they stood, probably behind the fake tree trunk that held it up.  No way to slip past them if he and Ruth wanted to leave.  And he hated interrupting people almost as much as being interrupted. 

Ruth might have thought of the other couple as more than erotic background noise, or not;  anyway after that first few seconds she thrust her fingers into Jim's waistband again, her body against his.  She opened the button at the top and fumbled with the zipper, one hand running up and down along Jim's re-hardening cock, outlining it through the fabric.  Waves of sensation beat through Jim and for once he just stood still, or as still as he could, reaching back to grab the railing behind him.  She untucked the long white tails of the shirt, reached through the opening in his briefs and worked his erection out into the cooler air.  Then she went down on him, and he shuddered at the chill where she was no longer against him, the heat where her mouth surrounded him, the friction of her hands along his thighs and her tongue on the end of his cock.  He opened his legs, bracing himself, and she moved closer between them, kneeling between his ankles, her breasts just above his knees, and her hands still stroking.  She squeezed his thighs up right below his buttocks and he thrust forward helplessly into her mouth and she did it again.  So good. 

"Ah . . .oh," said the voice, and it was as if the other man was making the sounds Jim felt choking in his own throat, as if the fingers teasing him and the mouth milking him were a stranger's.  Jim swallowed, and the taste of Ruth's mouth was still faintly in his.  He concentrated on it, savored it, felt the warm pulling, swirling, squeezing and rode the feeling until it burst. 

The bumpy texture of the railing made his hands ache.  He was leaning way out, his head hanging back, his mouth open though he thought he hadn't made any sound himself.  The voice below was still grunting and moaning.  Ruth let his cock slip from her mouth and laid her cheek against him, still holding his hips.  He stood straighter and she kneeled back.  He put himself back into his pants and zipped them, then knelt himself to take Ruth in his arms again. 

"Happy New Year," she whispered. 

"Happy New Year," Jim repeated, his hands running up and down her sides, her back. 

"Uh!" said the voice, and then fell silent.  After a moment there was subdued rustling, some thumps against the hollow plastic tree. 

"I think we can go now," Ruth said against Jim's neck. 

"Is that what you want?" Jim murmured. 

"Yes."  So they got up.  "Tuck in your shirt," Ruth said a little louder, and there was a renewed flurry of sound below.  Jim had an impulse to step over to the rail, lean over it, and say something about how much fun they'd all had.  But the couple below was scrambling like mice surprised in the pantry, and he didn't have the heart to embarrass them even more. 

By the time he and Ruth were back on the lower level, no one was there. 

And when they reached the table, Lillian greeted them with, "Gary took Sondra home, Jim.  They just stayed for midnight and then they went." 

Jim looked at the empty glass and crumpled cloth napkin on the table at Gary's place and felt a surge of some feeling he wasn't sure of, except that it wasn't good.  Then Ruth squeezed his arm closer to her side and he pulled himself together and introduced her.  Lillian was narrowing her eyes, trying hard to keep Ruth in focus, but obviously not quite succeeding.  Sumi wasn't even trying, but flashed a big smile. 

Ruth sighed.  When he looked at her, he found an odd expression on her face.  It was - yes, it was the expression he'd seen on the faces of his primary school teachers when the class was being unruly:  not anger, but a kind of weariness.  For an instant, even as he moved his arm around her waist and saw her face soften into a smile, he felt the gap in their ages and saw a time coming when it would be each other they were tired of.  His other hand closed on cloth and when he looked, he found himself holding Gary's napkin, and again raw feeling overtook him.  Gary wasn't here. 

Ruth was.  "Jim?" she said, as if to prove it.  "Darling?" 

He picked up the glass by its rim and said, "Sit here, babe."  She did, and he picked up Sondra's stuff too and put it in the middle of the table, then sat there himself, and waved at a waiter for more champagne.  This was his party, and it wasn't over yet.  
  

*********  
**Interlude: Gary's POV**  
*******  
  

Gary stumbled out of bed and hit the comm control.  The buzzing stopped.  "H'lo?" 

"It's dawn," said a dreamy voice.  "Gary, it's dawn." 

"Christ, Jim, what the fuck?" 

"D'I wake you?" 

Gary realized finally that Jim was drunk.  And what a sweet drunk he sounded.  It might have been a mistake to leave the New Year's Eve party before Jim got like this. 

"Yeah.  Never mind.  Why'd you call?" 

"Just . . . why'd I call? . . . I just wanted . . . Gar, it's so beautiful, the sky is just pink 'n . . . " 

"You," Gary smiled at the speaker, "are wasted, my friend." 

"I am."  Vast satisfaction in that innocent voice.  "Your friend." 

"Where are you?" Gary asked after a pause.  "And how did you get my code anyway?"  He _knew_ he hadn't told Jim where he was staying. 

"Rer . . . Re-routed," said Jim, "through the Academy . . . I said it was a 'mergency." 

"Really."  Gary hoped it wasn't. He'd never seen Jim drunk and didn't know whether he'd ever had this much alcohol in his system before.  "You feel OK?" 

"Oh, ya . . . yeah.  I just wanted t'talk."  And then he didn't. 

"So talk," Gary said.  He hit the button for visual, but nothing happened.  "Hey, I can't see you." 

"'S a booth, the pickup's broke." 

"Where are you?" 

"Near Ruth's." 

So now beside Gary's image of Jim flushed, in that tuxedo shirt with all the tiny pleats rumpled and the neck open, came the vision of Jim's hair disheveled, his mouth still swollen, maybe hickeys on that tender neck.  Gary shifted in his chair.  Damn.  At the most ordinary times Jim looked good enough to eat, and if Ruth _had_ . . . it was just as well Gary couldn't see him.  "Jim," he said, and heard the roughness in his own voice, swallowed, and cleared his throat.  "Jim, shouldn't you be on your way back?  In a cab or something?" 

"Autocab.  Got one.  Then it passed this booth, and I thought." 

"You thought?" Gary prompted. 

"Of you."  Another pause, and Gary visualized the bright head bent, the boyish hand raised to touch the comm unit, irrationally, adorably.  "Of you."  Gary closed his eyes. 

He had flirted with Jim when Jim taught his Ethics class, but he hadn't meant it, not really, except as distraction.  He had tried again when they met the first time afterward, in the campus pub, and Jim had slapped him down, in a nice way.  They had gone around together and picked up girls together (or tried to - hard to count Miss Jones), and been friends, and Gary wanted that;  he wanted an ordinary friend, like other people had.  He was sure Jim had dozens of friends. 

"I wanted to dance with you again," said Jim, sounding forlorn.  "Would you?  If you's . . . you'd st- . . . if you ha'n't left?  Or did you leave so you wouldn't have to?  I wouldn't make you, Gary." 

The tone caught at Gary's throat.  "No, I know."  And he would have held that warm, sweet-scented, relaxed body in his arms, moved clumsily after him as the music played, ached with wanting what Jim now seemed ready to give.  If Gary could let him get that close. 

"I missed you.  Ruth was there but I missed you." 

"I'm sorry."  And he was.  Sorry to have brought Ruth into the picture at all.  Sorry he'd ever said, 'go to this lecture, I know he'll be there - how do I know?  I just do.  A guess.  Ask questions, be noticeable.  And if you can, go with him afterward, impress him with how nice you are, and he'll be easy.'  He'd been right.  He was very, very sorry to be right. 

"Gary," said the voice of his friend, the unknowing beneficiary of his matchmaking skills, the most beautiful guy he'd seen for years, "Gary, you looked so good tonight.  Las' night.  You know." 

"I know.  Thank you." 

"Gary . . . I wanna tell you.  OK?  I wanna tell you." 

"Yes, OK, tell me." 

"OK?"  Then silence. 

Only Jim could play this drunken-echo game and make Gary hang on his every slurred word.   Gary wasn't going to encourage him any more to make what he suspected was a confession.  Of course, if Jim felt . . . something . . . he'd be easier to manage, but Gary almost didn't want to hear it. 

"God you looked good," said Jim.  "Sondra kept petting you . . . your arm . . . I wanted to.  Wanted to feel your skin.  And then we danced." 

They'd only touched each other's forearms, but the memory came back to Gary so strongly that he grabbed the armrests and pushed back in his chair. And afterward - 

"After, you touched my face," Jim was saying, "and oh, I didn't want you to stop.  Gary?  Are you listening?  Why'd you stop?" 

"I . . . I'm listening." 

"I want to kiss you.  I wanted it then." 

"Yes," Gary said, knowing Jim was not likely to remember this in the morning.  "I know." 

"You're so.  You're so."  Jim sighed gustily.  "If I wasn't with Ruth.  You know.  I'd be with you.  I'd want that." 

Gary tipped his head until it rested on the high back of the chair.  He wondered, forcing the distraction on his mind, if he could find a chair like this for his dorm room.  It was one of the very few things he missed when he wasn't here. 

"Could I?  See you?  Come there?" 

"No, Jim."  He wouldn't tell Jim where he was.  It would just start a million other questions. 

He gave himself a second to imagine confiding in Jim, not tonight, of course, when he wouldn't remember, but for real.  'This is where I'm staying, this is how I got stuck staying here, this is where I come from, this is what I used to do to stay alive . . .' no, he really couldn't.  Couldn't imagine how this sheltered boy would react, whether he'd decide Gary was some sort of charity case or curiosity or . . . whatever.  The gleam that came into the Admiral's eye when he realized that Gary wanted to take the entrance exam, that he could put Gary under that kind of debt - if he ever saw that, or anything even a tiny bit like it, on Jim's face he might hit out, might lose it the way he almost had in the gym that time.  And then he hadn't even had a reason. 

Jim was still babbling.  Even drunk he had the kind of voice Gary could listen to for a long while. 

". . . so good doing things with you.  Fun.  'N hearing your voice, Gar, I like talking to you 'n hearing you talk.  D'you?  Gary?" 

"Yes," Gary admitted. 

"Yes?  Did you say yes?" 

"Yes, I said yes." 

A pause.  "Yes what?" 

Now Gary was the one who sighed.  "Jim, go home.  To the dorm.  You need to sleep." 

"Yeah?  Think I should?" 

"I do." 

"I'm not sleepy." 

"You will be." 

"Will I?" 

If he were here, Gary wouldn't keep trying to argue;  he'd just make Jim lie down and let him tell the ceiling how not-sleepy he was, for the minute or so it would take.  Like a child.  Like a few children he'd known, except they had better reasons than this for having a hard time getting to sleep.  The old anger swept up from chest to throat, and he forgot this was just Jim, just the babbling and spurious energy of somebody who'd been drinking champagne for hours.  "For god's sake," he snapped, "will you get in the cab and go back to the dorm?  It's, what, around four in the morning?  Fuck, Jim!  _I_ want to sleep if you don't.  Hear me?" 

"I hear." 

"Good night."  And Gary really should have turned off, except he didn't trust Jim to break the connection and go back to the cab.  So he waited. 

"Goo'night," said Jim, forlorn again.  Then a pause, but there was no break-sound.  "Gary?" 

Gary rubbed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between strokes.  Of course.  "What?" 

"I'm sorry.  I'm sorry, Gary.  I woke you up, di'n't I?" 

"Yeah, you did, and I want to go to sleep again now." 

"Yeah, good idea.  Go back to sleep.  To bed."  Jim sighed again. 

"And you get into that cab, OK? Shut the comm off and get into the cab." 

"Yeah, I will."  But he still didn't. 

Gary waited. 

"Gary?" 

"What, Jim?" 

"You mad?" 

"If I say I'm not mad, will you get into the damn cab?" 

"You're mad.  I'm sorry, Gary.  Di'n't mean to make you mad." 

"I know.  I'm really not mad.  I'm really tired.  OK, Jim?  You understand?  I want you to stop talking.  Turn the comm off.  Get into the cab.  Go home.  Go to bed.  Understand?"  Jesus, drunks and children and dogs, you just had to say little things over and over. 

"OK."  Pause.  "I'm gonna turn it off now." 

"Good, Jim, do that." 

"Good night," he said, suddenly clear, and louder, as if he'd leaned into the audio pickup.  "Gary.  Sleep tight.  Sweet dreams."  And then he really did turn off the comm. 

Sweet dreams?  Did Jim's mother tell him that when she tucked him in?  Gary wouldn't have been surprised.  His own goal was no dreams at all, thanks very much. 

He pushed himself out of the chair and went back to bed, only to lie looking at the ceiling himself, seeing that vision of Jim in the booth full of faint, rosy light.  Sweet enough, certainly.  But a dream?  
 


	4. The Trouble with Gary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk's spring break, senior year. It starts about fifteen months after the events in "Party Like It's '99." Five months after Kirk and Ruth broke up. There's an overlap in this chapter with "Machine Child and the Wild Ape." They kind of spoil each other.

*********  
**March, Jim's Senior Year**  
*******

Jim didn't know why Gary wouldn't have sex with him. 

All Spring Break he wondered about the possibility, especially after the day Jim went up to the attic to roust Gary out of the window alcove where he seemed to be spending the week.  Jim ended up wrestling with him and would have won but that Gary pulled him into one of the hotter kisses he'd ever had.  Gary rolled them both over, cradling Jim's head in his hands and crouching over him like an amorous vampire.  Jim craned his head up and pulled Gary down, but Gary resisted, kept the position he'd taken, touching Jim only where his legs straddled Jim's waist and his hands held Jim's skull and his mouth drank from Jim's.  Pulled back a little and nibbled Jim's lips.  Moved in again and slid his tongue along the roof of Jim's mouth.  It seemed to go on for a very long while, and Gary's eyes were closed the whole time, and Jim was hard and felt just the nudging tip of Gary's cock, and then suddenly Gary let go and stood up. 

"No.  I . . . No," said Gary, as if in answer to some unspoken demand.  He shook his head and clenched his fists. 

"Gary - " said Jim, and then his mother's voice called to them.  Lunch was ready.  Gary vanished down the stairs.  Jim sat up, feeling dazed.  He could still taste Gary's tongue and the soft places it had rasped were tingling. 

"Jim?" - his mother's voice, still remote. 

"Yeah, Mom, coming," he said, and he nearly had been, and that made him grin.  He got up, dusted himself off, slapping the back of his shorts, and went down.  But Gary wasn't at the kitchen table. 

"He's washing his hands," said his mother, "and you could stand to do the same.  How on earth did you get cobwebs in your hair?" 

"Oh, we were in the attic," Jim said. 

She shook her head but said only, "Use the kitchen sink," so he did, and was just smoothing back his hair and reaching for a towel when he heard her say, "Sit anywhere," and Gary's voice mumbling some reply.  Gary seemed absolutely incapable of talking to Jim's mother, who usually charmed his friends in no time flat.  Jim couldn't figure it out but right now he didn't think about it - he could feel where Gary was in the room without even looking, like a stove, warmth beating against his skin from Gary's direction.  And when he turned and sat at the table, every movement of Gary's hands and arms and jaw drew Jim's eyes.  It was all he could do not to stare, to sit and eat himself, so not counting a few remarks his mother made about the weather and the food, they ate in silence.  Jim cleared away his plate and put it in the washer and would not have been able to say what had been on it. Gary reached past with his own plate and Jim looked up and met his gaze at last.  Gary's eyes were wide and dark;  his mouth still seemed flushed, and all Jim wanted was to grab and kiss him again, but couldn't bring himself to do it in front of his mother. 

"You haven't even seen the barn yet, have you?" he asked, his voice involuntarily low. 

"No," Gary answered. 

"Come on, then, I'll show you."  He led the way out the back door, across the porch and down the three wooden stairs, along the path edged with narrow flower beds where nothing yet bloomed.  Again he knew without turning how Gary first hesitated, and then followed closely, and then, self-consciously, dropped behind again.  They passed his mother's little bower with the long wooden swing hanging between arched trellises covered with bare vines, and the tool shed like a toy version of the barn. The path ended and Gary caught up to walk beside him across the grass. 

"Aren't barns pretty much alike?" Gary asked. 

"Depends what's in them." 

"What's in yours?" 

"Horses . . . and a hayloft."  Jim smiled.  "Don't you want to see the hayloft?" 

"Oh, no," said Gary, "no more cobwebs."  He reached out, tentatively, and Jim stood so still he almost wasn't breathing, but all Gary did was hook a cobweb out of the hair above Jim's collar, without even touching him.  "You had that whole list of things to do - " the ghost of Gary's rakish grin was on his face - "I don't even remember them.  Mmm, say again?" 

"We could go riding," Jim suggested, though his heart was not in it.  "Do you like to do that?" 

And suddenly the moment twisted, anger flared on Gary's face and his hand, still half raised, snapped down to his side.  "Where do you think I've been _living_?  When did you think I'd learn to ride a _horse_?" 

"Now, if you want."  Jim tried desperately to get back to the warm spot they'd been in.  "Gar, it's easy, I've taught people before."  He reached out to grasp Gary's arm, but he stepped away.  "Or we don't have to, it's just a thing to do."  A small smile.  "I'd rather go back to what we were doing in the attic anyway." 

Gary's face was immobile.  "Show me the horses," he said. 

He was still pale and stiff in the barn, and when Topaz thrust her head over the half-door of her stall, he stepped back, out of the way of her questing nose.  Jim realized Gary had never seen a real horse, certainly not closely enough to realize what large animals they were. 

Tope nudged Jim's shoulder, and he rubbed up and down her nose and patted her neck until her ears stopped flicking back and forth and the white edge around her eye was gone.  Now if he could get Gary to settle down he'd be two for two. 

"Gary, come touch her," Jim said in his most soothing voice;  "she can feel you're nervous."  He kept his own hands on the horse as Gary stepped forward, and they stroked the warm fur together.  And Gary did relax, gradually, and then looked up at Jim and smiled the way he hadn't in - Jim wasn't sure how long, but in the state he was in twenty minutes felt like forever.  "She's the one I want to saddle for you," he said now over the tenderness and lust burning in his chest.  He hadn't felt this since Ruth.  The last thing he wanted to do was walk away to where the saddles were - he wanted to go on diving into Gary's brown eyes - but Gary looked away and began to rub the horse's neck, and Jim felt he had promised.  Maybe Gary needed space. 

He pulled his hands away with an effort, and said, "Stay with her," and went for the saddle.  He checked it over and put it on the stand and came back to get Topaz, and Gary moved aside and watched hard, but impersonally, seeming more interested in the process than in Jim doing it.  Jim wondered how long he had wanted to learn horseback riding and exactly why he hadn't.  But some of the blood must have gone back to his brain at last, because he knew better than to ask. 

Jim led Topaz out to the paddock, and Gary followed.  Jim mounted, demonstrating, and then dismounted, very aware of Gary's eyes on his back, or his ass, or his legs . . . Jim hoped the interest was sexual but was no longer sure. When he turned, Gary's look was enigmatic.  "You try," said Jim. "Take as many tries as you need \- Topaz is a good, steady girl." 

Gary's face was set, and he moved past Jim and took the stirrup from him without speaking.  Gary's foot in the stirrup, Gary's hands on the saddle, Gary's muscles tightening as he braced himself - Jim did have a pretty good view, and part of his mind enjoyed it while another part automatically assessed the position and the amount and direction of the thrust Gary was using.  It wasn't quite right, and Topaz shifted her weight, and Gary caught his ribs on the saddle, slid, and dropped down again. 

"That usually hurts," said Jim, "your ankle OK?" 

"Yeah, mmm, yeah," Gary said absentmindedly, eyes moving from horse to stirrup to saddle.  He took his forward hand off the saddle horn and patted Topaz's neck.  "Good girl," he said, and Jim felt a surge of satisfaction at the tone of Gary's voice.  Gary readjusted and took a breath and heaved himself up into the saddle, not as smoothly as Jim had but better than most beginners.  He sat for a moment looking between the horse's ears, then around the paddock from his new height, then down at Jim.  The sun edged his figure with light and he looked calm and confident.  Jim took a few steps and put his hands on Gary's leg and Topaz's side and smiled up at his gorgeous friend, and he knew his heart was in his face but he didn't care.  Gary smiled down. 

It was a moment Jim would remember for years. 

"I could have sworn this horseback riding thing included moving around," said Gary. 

They worked in the paddock for a couple of hours, then rubbed Topaz down and took a walk over one of the trails they might ride later, and talked about horses and riding, and Jim talked about teaching his young cousins.  That was the first time the constraint came back, a little, and Gary looked sidelong at Jim and asked in a voice that was not as casual as he obviously meant to be, "You have a big extended family?" 

"Not so big," Jim said, "Mom's an only child and Dad only had one brother - like me.  So there's Uncle Peter and his three kids, and Grandma Evans, Mom's mother - now.  Dad's father used to live here, help Mom out, until he couldn't any more."  Grandpa had died of a stroke while Jim was lost on Tarsus, and even his things were mostly gone by the time Jim got back.  He didn't want to talk about that, but the memory pulled in the corners of his mouth and he saw Gary looking curiously at him.  "And you?" he asked to get away from the topic. 

Gary looked away.  "No."  He said no more and Jim did not push him. 

They were walking along the top of a tree-lined ridge and had reached a gap in the high brown weeds and the bundles of sticks bristling with small green leaves.  "Oh look," Jim said unnecessarily, and they both paused.  The field below was planted in soybean, and little clusters of green dotted the dark furrows;  the sun was low enough to light all the buds and leaves and grass as if from within;  the clouds streaked across the sky were getting dimly gold and rose though the sun was not actually setting yet. 

"I suppose," said Gary harshly, "that someday this will all be yours." 

"No," said Jim mildly, having seen this reaction in other people, "mostly Sam's, I think.  My older brother. Sam's more likely to live here, or on Earth anyway, and he's already engaged to Aurelan, and they plan to have kids. Mom knows what it's like when the main owner's in space somewhere all the time.  Not good.  You and I, Gar, we're not farmers." 

Gary was watching Jim again.  When he didn't speak, Jim glanced over and caught him at it, and for a long moment they just looked before Gary said, much more softly, "Do you mind?" 

"No.  A little.  Well, truth is, sometimes I mind a lot and sometimes not at all.  I _want_ space.  I want to go a long way and do a lot of wild important things \- " he laughed a little - "and command aa ship, and all that.  But maybe, maybe someday I'll want to come back, raise horses, be more than just Uncle Jim who has the same guest room whenever he's got Earth shore leave.  But by that time probably Sam's kids will be grown and doing it all themselves, they won't want some old spacer getting in their way.  I don't know."  He paused, looked down at the path, scuffed a toe under one corner of a fist-sized rock and tried to pry it out of the ground.  Gary's eyes were still on him, he knew, but it was easier not to meet them just now.  "Right up until last year, I still kind of assumed I'd marry somebody, and if they had a ground job and could telecommute they could live here, be company for Mom, you know.  But Mom went through that and I've been thinking it isn't - " he laughed again because the phrase made him self-conscious - "isn't fair to anybody to make them wait that way.  I've seen it with Mom and Dad."   He gave up on the rock and looked up.  Gary was still watching, his face quiet and open.  If only he was like that more often, or just sweet and hot the way he was in the attic, if only people weren't so damn complicated and full of secrets, if only the wind wasn't chilly and the sun getting low, so they could just lie down in the grass and let their bodies do the talking.  But it was almost dinner time.  Jim took Gary's hand and held it firmly and said, "We'd better get back." 

For a little while Gary's fingers tightened, and he wasn't angry or withdrawn, but he let go of Jim's hand and walked ahead on the path, and all the way to the farmhouse Jim looked at the muscular back and wondered what the hell was going on. 

The next morning, Jim woke with a half-remembered dream and an erection and lay running hands over skin and imagining -  
 

> _Jim gets up, throws on his robe, walks down the hallway to Gary's room, and though he'd heard the bolt slide shut the previous night, it's undone now;  the door is just ajar and he sees the light;  Gary left the curtains open. Jim touches the door and it swings inward.  There is the corner of the bed, the blankets mussed, the mound of Gary's feet, the shape of his body under the covers.  He is lying on his back with one arm across his face.  Jim goes in as silently as the sun and treads through patches of warm light to the bed.  He trails his fingers across the lightly furred forearm to the hand, and Gary raises the arm and looks at him.  Yes, just like some of the looks before, like he wanted to swallow Jim whole. Jim pulls down the covers slowly, slow-ly, feeling Gary's skin with the tips of his fingers, and Gary just lies there watching.  
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> __
> 
> _Or Jim says to Gary, "Turn over, I'm sure you're stiff from riding yesterday, let me help," and Gary flips back the covers and turns onto his stomach.  He sleeps nude, just as Jim does.  For a moment Jim can't even touch him, looking is so good, all those muscles and that skin Gary's clothes have been covering.  A streak of sun from the window falls across Gary's ass.  Jim doesn't want to scare him off or rush this, so he starts up on Gary's shoulders, rubbing, digging in his fingers, and the muscles are pretty relaxed already but are so warm and wonderful to touch that he keeps manipulating them.  Over the hard edges of shoulder blades.  Down the bumpy ridge of the spine, circling with his thumbs here, here, here, down either side._

__

  
Jim turned on his side so he could knuckle either side of his own spine while his other hand was on his cock.  
  

> _Down to where the natural indentations are, and by this time Gary is breathing harshly into his pillow and his ass is tight . . . Jim hits it with the flat of his hand, the slap sounding loud in the quiet room, and Gary jumps._

  
"Huh!" Jim half-laughed, aching hard, his eyes shut so tightly he saw wheels of light.  He stroked his own ass.  
  

> _No, Jim doesn't spank him. He just brushes his fingertips across the tight skin.  Gary shivers.  Jim circles with both palms on Gary's ass, then runs his hands down the backs of Gary's legs clear to the soles of his feet, where he'll begin to massage in earnest.  He picks up one of those broad feet, strong and flat like Gary's hands, and begins to knead it with his thumbs --_

  
Despite the fact that he had already stopped pumping himself and was trying to hold back, Jim could no longer keep himself from coming, and he twisted into the sheets and gritted his teeth as the semen spurted out of him.  Then lay still.  What a mess.  And he never even finished the fantasy!  He sighed, wiped himself with the drier part of the top sheet, and then got up, shivering a little, and stripped the bed. 

Gary's door stayed bolted.  After breakfast Jim drank a slow cup of coffee and looked at a newscast, still trying not to think about Gary in bed, and then went upstairs for a sweater.  As he was emerging from his room, Gary came out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist and another one over his shoulders, moving as if his legs ached.  Jim's fantasy came back to him so vividly that though he gripped the doorframe with both hands, what he felt was Gary's skin. 

"Hullo, Jim," said Gary. 

"How are you?"  Jim asked him, and then clenched his teeth and did not mention stiff muscles or massages. 

"Slept great," Gary said.  "Too great, huh?" 

"We're on vacation," Jim shrugged.  "There's no schedule."  And Gary grinned and walked past to his room again, and Jim gazed after him and wondered. 

He did that a lot, the rest of the day and the next, as they did most of the things he'd told Gary they might do - well, he skipped the girl-watching, and Gary didn't seem to miss it.  He was doing a lot of Jim-watching, and Jim certainly didn't mind but could have done with some more Jim-touching, of which there was damn little. 

At night in the yard, rocking in the swing and gazing at the field of stars they both meant to explore, Jim slipped his arm around Gary's waist and felt his back straighten, then relax.  A few seconds later, Gary leaned out to raise his arm and then resettled with his elbow on the back of the swing and his hand in Jim's hair.  It was cozy, but definitely not all Jim had in mind.  He had been careful and self-controlled, and almost nothing had happened all Spring Break.  There wasn't much of this free time left.  He waited only a few more minutes and then said, "Gary." 

"Umm?" 

Well, he _sounded_ relaxed enough.  Jim brought his other arm across, turned slightly so he held Gary closer, and said, "Gary, why aren't we fucking?" 

Gary pulled away sharply, stood up, walked away from the swing and the house without saying a word. 

After a stunned second, Jim got up and went after him, not quite running.  "Gary?" 

Gary stopped but didn't turn.  Jim caught up to him, reached out, thought twice and didn't touch the rigid shoulder. 

"Let me go!" Gary said, as though Jim had grabbed him.  "Let me _go_!"  And this time he was the one who almost ran.  Jim didn't follow.  He went back to the swing and sat for a while, though he didn't really believe Gary would come back there.  And he was right.  And the stars were eventually too indifferent, so he went inside and got himself a cup of decaffeinated coffee to warm up before he went to his empty bed. 

His mother came into the kitchen while he was drinking it, took in his expression and Gary's absence, and came to the table, wrapping her robe more tightly around her and retying the belt.  She pulled his head over to kiss him on the hair, and held him for a minute or so.  Then she let go. 

"I hated being eighteen myself," she said cryptically, and went back upstairs. 

The next morning they all pretended nothing had happened.  Well, nothing had.  That was the trouble. 

There was only this day left of the break and it felt like a year.  The weather even soured, cloudy and windy and not-quite-raining.  Gary spent most of it reading again, though at least now he was doing it in the living room and not in the attic. 

That evening, the last before they were going back to California, Jim didn't want to go to bed and Gary didn't seem to want to, either.  Jim's mother went upstairs at around eleven, and then Jim and Gary just read, silently, under their separate lamps.  The house was very quiet.  The shadows up around the ceiling and down the corners of the room seemed thicker than usual.  Jim stole glances at Gary, noting the light on his hair and forehead, shoulders and legs, crossed ankles and feet, and on his hand as it rose and languidly tapped the Next key.  Then Jim turned a page of his own and read, and turned another page without having looked at Gary and kept reading.  And then he did look up and found Gary gazing at him. 

Mysterious.  Ambiguous.  Sexy.  Jim stared back. 

Gary set the bookpadd on the table and got up, and for a crazy moment Jim was certain he was going to walk across the rag rug and pull Jim up out of the chair and kiss him.  "I'm turning in," Gary said instead. 

Jim wanted to say, 'I'll go with you.  I'll tuck you in.  I'll blow you, would you like that?' 

"Good night," he really said, but he suspected his other thoughts were showing clearly enough. 

Gary hesitated.  "I'm sorry," he said. 

Jim looked at the unrevealing face.  Then nodded.  By rights he should have felt embarrassed - wasn't Gary saying he didn't want him? - but instead there was a kind of dull pressure in his chest and throat, something he didn't want to examine. 

"It was a good vacation," Gary said, not very believably. 

Jim tried a social lie of his own.  "Maybe we'll do it again sometime." 

After another pause, Gary said, "Maybe," and then, "Good night," and left. 

Jim didn't want to read any more, but he let Gary get upstairs and into the guest room before he put his book away, shut off the lamps, and went to his own bedroom. 

He looked at the bolted door as he passed it.  He remembered the feel of Gary's fingers in his hair. 

Maybe.  Sometime.  



	5. The No-Win Scenario

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk's adventures, senior year, when he gets another chance at the scenario he wants to win.

*********  
**May, Jim's Senior Year**  
*******

Back at the Academy, Gary and Jim were both busy, and anyway the gap between senior and sophomore made their friendship hard to pursue.  They ran into each other sometimes, left messages a lot . . . they sat at the same lunch table twice.  Jim had to drop the card games they and a few other cadets had played every other Friday night.  He was studying too hard.  All his classes were gearing up for the big exams.  And he had just taken the Kobayashi Maru test for the second time, gotten a "good" assessment (not good _enough_!), and was trying hard to find somebody or some file that would explain what the heck he was supposed to be doing differently. 

One night, and it had to be the tenth time he'd been through the tapes of his own trials in the simulation lab, slow-motion, 3-D, multi-POV, feverishly trying to see the test anew, Jim looked at the clock on the projector and realized it had been - well, he wasn't sure how many hours - since he'd eaten.  He couldn't keep going indefinitely on coffee from the basement lounge.  He left the booth he'd been using, still logged-in and password-locked, and made his way out of the library. 

It was almost empty and only half-lit.  At this time of year it was open all night, but between 2200 and 500 hours there were no live librarians, just security staff, and not everything was powered up.  Jim went a little out of his direct route so he could walk through the Historical Documents section, his favorite part of the library.  The very oldest and rarest books were in vacuum cases, but books bound during the last century were on the shelves, interspersed with tapes and disks.  The overhead fixtures were mostly off, so just a few cones of yellow light poured to the scuffed glass-block floor, and elsewhere a faint glow pervaded the glass and the rows of vacuum cases, like harvest moonlight. 

Jim went through the stacks and ran his fingers over the bumps of the old spines.  There was nothing like the feel of a real book.  Gary laughed at his liking for solid hard copy, called him a stack of books with legs, but of course when he cared to _do_ it, Gary could study with the best of them. 

Just as he thought of Gary, Jim heard his voice.  The sound was soft, not close by, and he wasn't sure it was even real, but just as he was telling himself that fatigue and sexual frustration excused a lot but that he could not allow himself to actually hallucinate, he heard another voice speaking, more distinctly, though he still couldn't hear much. 

" . . . say _no_? . . . point of paying . . . " 

Jim walked toward the sound and heard what was definitely Gary's voice murmuring in reply.  Then the other again. 

" . . . like you _belong_ . . . " 

The tone was so vicious that Jim stopped in his tracks for a moment, and then moved again in a rush.  But either he made more noise than he realized or what he'd heard was a parting shot, because when he found the study table in the corner with its green-shaded lamps, Gary was alone there. 

In front of him an open book and a padd lay on the table, but Jim didn't think for a moment that he'd overheard a study session.  Gary was staring down at the page, though, so Jim slid into a chair and waited. 

Gary looked up warily and Jim wanted, quite simply, to kill whoever had made him feel like that.  Whatever Gary had gotten himself into (and what was it?), Jim wanted to protect him from it, so fiercely that he couldn't immediately think of anything to say but "Tell me," and heard the words come out of his mouth with horror, knowing that Gary would not and fearing how he would react. 

Actually Gary didn't get angry.  He just looked for a long moment, his expression slowly shifting from wariness to something Jim couldn't quite read.  Then Gary shrugged one shoulder and looked back down at the book.  He must have guessed that Jim had not heard much. 

Eventually, Jim tried again.  "I've been in the sim lab since," Jim tried to pinpoint it, "uh . . . " 

"Since uh?"  Gary asked with a little smile.  "If you can't remember, Jim, it's really pathetic." 

"Low blood sugar," Jim said.  "I'm on my way to get something to eat.  Come along?" 

"I'd better.  I'm not sure you can _find_ the mess hall."  Gary closed the book and stood up. 

"Very funny, Mr. I'm About To Leave My Padd Behind." 

At the door to the mess, Gary paused, and then went in nonchalantly.  Actually, the room was empty except for Jorgenson, who did all her studying there and had better be looking for an assignment without stringent physical requirements, and Ren Mori and Tia Chavez, definitely _not_ studying in a corner.  Jim programmed a chicken sandwich with a side of those little soysnack cubes in bright colors, and a glass of milk.  Gary got himself soysnacks and coffee.  They sat away from the others, near a dark window, and Jim ate in silence as Gary chatted brightly about underclassmen Jim knew and on-campus events and so forth, popping the cubes in his mouth.  A phantom Gary mocked Jim from the window pane.  The real one seemed no more touchable than the reflection. 

Jim knew he was being glum but couldn't seem to come up with anything to say.  Gary watched him eat two or three soysnacks and then said, "So what were you doing in the sim lab?" 

"It's the Kobayashi Maru.  You know there's that big secrecy thing, so I can't talk about it." 

"Are you telling me," Gary smiled over the edge of his coffee cup, "that the Academy star, Midshipman Lieutenant James Kirk, did less than perfectly on a command simulation?" 

"Not good enough." 

"OK, what are you going to do differently next time?" 

Jim shook his head.  "I can't think of anything," he said.  "That's the trouble.  I've watched every damn frame, I've found tiny errors the bridge crew made, I've picked up six design flaws in the simulation - the lights in Ops are the wrong color, on the lower right-hand display -" Gary rolled his eyes, and Jim grinned reluctantly.  "Yes, I know, that's not useful!  I just mean I've _really_ looked.  I just don't see any way I could have - given different commands.  Won." 

"Maybe you can't win." 

Jim looked up, and Gary swept a hand across the air between them.  "No, uh-uh, of course I didn't mean _you_ couldn't win, because of anything you did.  I mean, maybe it's a no-win situation." 

"How can it be?" Jim asked. 

"Jim, for god's sake, of course it can.  The universe is full of no-win situations."  Gary's eyes had gone dark again, or maybe it was more that he pulled in his chin and shadows fell over them, but when he looked like that Jim knew he was thinking something he wouldn't share.  "Full of them.  Yeah.  Even for you." 

Jim himself was thinking of the voice he'd heard from the darkness of the Historical Documents stacks.  He knew that if he raised the issue again he still wouldn't get any answers, and might provoke Gary into anger or withdrawal, so to keep himself from asking he picked out three of his favorite soysnacks, the green ones, and looked at them for a moment before putting the first one in his mouth.  By the time he'd swallowed it, he'd thought of a remark.  "I don't believe in a no-win situation." 

Gary was watching him.  His slow, sexy smile distracted Jim completely. 

"Then," Gary said, his voice low, "you'll have to change the rules." 

Jim sat, not breathing, the snacks still in his hand. 

"Change.  The.  Rules."  Gary took the second snack from Jim's fingers and ate it.  Jim reached out and Gary guided his hand and Jim's fingertips were in Gary's mouth and he ate the third snack, teeth just grazing Jim's middle finger, the wet inside of his lips so warm it sent a shock wave up Jim's arm and throughout his body. 

"Gary," said Jim hoarsely. 

"Mmm." Gary closed his mouth on Jim's fingers and ran his tongue across the tips. 

" _Gary_ ," Jim said. 

Gary pulled Jim's wrist down and Jim clutched at Gary's hand and said, "Damn you, don't tease me this way." 

"I'm changing the rules." 

"Then _change_ them." 

"All right."  Gary extracted his hand, and stood up, and pulled his food tray to the edge of the table, bending over and pitching his voice low.  "We get rid of this junk.  We go back to the library, to that locked sim booth.  I fuck you.  Those are the new rules." 

Jim stood too.  "We'll see who fucks who." 

"Isn't it whom?" 

"I'm changing that rule." 

Gary laughed.  "Oh, go right ahead, Jim.  You wild rebel.  Change the grammar rules." 

Jim smiled, took a step closer, around the corner of the table.  "OK," he said, "now 'Gary fucks Jim' means that Gary gets on his hands and knees and takes Jim's cock up his ass."  Another step.  He took the tray from Gary's hands and put it back on the table.  "How's that for a new grammar rule?" 

Gary asked in a breathless voice, "What does 'Jim causes gossip' mean?" 

"This," said Jim and grabbed Gary's shoulders and pulled him in for a kiss. 

It wasn't like the kiss in the attic.  Jim was conscious all the time that they weren't alone.  Gary gave him some tongue and Jim just closed his teeth on it, gently, teasing the end with his own.  The kiss tasted like soysnack.  Gary started to laugh into Jim's mouth. 

Jim pulled back.  "Yes, well, we can do better than that," he said. 

"Oh, yeah," said Gary.  "So let's get the hell out of here and _do_ better." 

As they ditched the trays, Jim wondered whether they really had caused gossip.  He didn't care - at the moment he would have fucked Gary in the middle of the common at noon - and it wasn't like there was a regulation against sex among cadets.  But Jorgenson's nose was still buried in her book and Tia and Ren were gazing at each other, and Jim just wondered.  He'd know eventually, though, and meanwhile he was going to have sex with Gary.  After all this time.  He could hardly take it in. 

He grabbed Gary's hand as they left the building, still in the half-circle of light around the doors, and pulled him to the side where there was a bench in the shadow, but they didn't even sit down before they were kissing again.  The concrete bench pressed its cold rough surface into Jim's calves and Gary's tongue pressed into his mouth, not still now, and his own slid around it.  Gary's hands pulled through Jim's hair, grabbed his neck, slid over his shoulders and down his back.  Jim's hands cupped Gary's ass, that beautiful, beautiful thing he'd looked at so many times and had to see naked.  _Had_ to.  He wasn't getting enough air.  And Gary's nose was pushed sideways under Jim's cheekbone.  They broke away from the kiss, gasping and aching and laughing like fools, bodies still so clamped together that their erections couldn't even rise. 

Jim squeezed Gary's ass again.  "Why are we going all the way to the library when there's a wall right here?" he asked. 

"Because - " Gary was still gulping in air and wheezing with laughter - "if I don't see you naked - I'm going to lose my mind.  And.  It's too cold." 

"My room then." 

"Too far away." 

"Fuck you, Mitchell, you're teasing again." 

Gary leaned in, took Jim's lower lip between his teeth, and ground them gently, the lower teeth moving in a little circle, and then let go, and Jim pushed into the contact but Gary grabbed his head and held it away, only an inch or so.  "I thought fucking me was the plan," he said very softly, the air from his mouth puffing against Jim's.  "How long do you want to wait?" 

Jim closed his eyes and groaned.  "Oh, _yeah_ ," said Gary, and Jim felt fingers stroking around his ears and along his jaw and up his cheeks and across his eyelids, and he was shaking and couldn't seem to open his eyes.  "Yeah, Jim, _yeah_ , you're so ready, you're showing me now," and his thumbs were circling just at the corners of Jim's eyes, and Jim felt as if he were falling, as if he were burning up in short repeated flashes, as if he were going to explode right there, his balls were tightening and in a second it would be over.  He grabbed Gary's wrists and pulled the hands away and hauled his eyes open.  Jim pushed his knuckles against Gary's shoulders, and Gary took one step back, hands loose in the air, still smiling. 

Jim opened his mouth and nothing came out.  He swallowed and croaked, "Library." 

It was still too long, too far away.  Jim didn't trust himself even to touch Gary, even to look at him, and they walked beside each other but about a meter apart, the wind blowing between them. 

One of them had to go through the revolving door first, though, and Jim quickened his pace - and so did Gary - so it was a kind of race.  Jim won this one.  Into the dim space of the lobby, up the wide shadow-filled staircase, round the landing, up again \- all too long.  This time, there was no detour through Historical Docs.  Jim looked at the floor ahead, at the end of the corridor, at the doors to the sim lab.  At Gary's hand reaching for the bar or the handle.  Jim swallowed. 

His booth wasn't the one nearest the door, though at least it wasn't way at the back of the lab.  Jim's hands were shaking as he keyed in his password.  The booth door seemed to slide open in slow motion.  He stepped inside;  Gary did;  the door shut. 

And now Jim could look.  And now Gary pulled off the shiny cadet tunic, and under it was skin Jim had seen in Iowa, but without the towel and with the nipples drawn tight, a pinkish caramel color that made Jim's mouth water.  Jim reached but Gary grabbed his wrist and blocked him. 

"You strip too," Gary said.  So Jim's view of Gary taking off his boots was momentarily blocked, but fortunately the tunic was over his head by the time Gary's hands were at the fly of his pants, and again Jim was frozen, staring helplessly as Gary slid the black cloth over his hips.  Either he wasn't wearing underwear or he peeled them down with the pants.  His pubic hair was a darker cocoa brown than the hair on his head, and his cock stood up thick and solid and uncircumcised, and Jim got his own pants down in record time, the elastic of his briefs dragging painfully over his own cock and the legs of his pants still tangled with the tops of his boots.  He pushed at the top of one boot, stepped out of the tangled mess on that side and then the other and finally, finally, _finally_ felt Gary all along his body, like one of his fantasies. 

"Jim, oh boy, Jim," said Gary, and they clutched each other, and Jim was making some sort of noise too but he wasn't sure if it was Gary's name.  He had waited so long for this he could hardly feel it.  He was so hard he didn't know what to do about it.  They hardly moved, didn't even kiss, just stood pressed together feeling each other's warmth and breathing for a while. 

Then their hands began to move, almost at the same time, brushing and stroking and kneading each other's skin.  Jim raised his hands to dig his fingers into Gary's thick short hair, pressed into his scalp, dragged down to trace his hairline, wanting to touch every part of that body he had been staring at for so long.  He traced the rims of Gary's ears, fingered the small lobes, and he pinched the right one while his left hand dropped to rub up and down the big vein in Gary's neck.  Gary put his cheek on Jim's hair and Jim rubbed the tendon and the collar bone and his other hand was at the edge of Gary's shoulder blade, and then he lost track of the touching-everywhere plan and both hands just slid irresistibly down to Gary's ass.  Cupped it, not grabbing, so he could feel the hair ruffle as he moved his hands, up and down. Gary slid his face against Jim's without ever lifting his head, pushing hard against Jim like a cat, and his mouth was open and his ass was pressing back into Jim's palms and his cock moved against Jim's - then they did kiss again.  Their mouths were open so far that Jim's jaw ached a little, but that was nothing next to his cock, and then Gary moved back just far enough to slide his hands in between their bodies, fingertips and knuckles across the tops of Jim's thighs and then in behind his sac \- "Oh!" said Jim, and then even louder as Gary moved his fingers and Jim's knees gave and they dropped down to the floor, "OH!"  His shoulders and the back of his head brushed the carpet but his back was arched so hard he pulled himself up to a half-sitting position, Gary bending over him and hissing, "Ssh, Jim, ssssh, the security guard," and Gary's hand covered Jim's mouth while the other still teased his balls, and he bit Gary's palm and grunted into it as he came. 

Jim collapsed, back flat on the floor.  He licked Gary's hand where he had bitten it.  Gary's eyes were glazed, his face was beaded with sweat, and he was still hard.  He brushed his wet palm up to Jim's hair and his other hand stroked Jim's now-limp cock, rubbing sticky wetness from Jim's skin onto his own. 

"Your rules," Jim said, his voice thready, and Gary smiled or bared his teeth and moved his handful of semen farther down between Jim's legs until he found Jim's asshole.  Jim squirmed helplessly as he felt Gary's wet fingers work their way toward it, and he spread his legs but that wouldn't make him any less new to this.  It felt scary, it felt ticklish, it felt so _good_ and full already and he knew it was just the beginning, Gary only had the very tip of one finger in.  Pressing outward, round and round, pressing in, and there was the knuckle, goddamn, was this what women felt?  He could feel _everything_ , the hardness of Gary's nail and his other fingers pressing around the opening and his palm flat against the skin under Jim's sac.  All Jim's joints were loose and his muscles were only responding to the jolts of sensation from his ass.  Gary slid the finger all the way in and then all the way out, and Jim made a sort of "uuuooooh" noise, pleasure and then disappointment.  Then two fingertips were pressing in together and Jim moved his hips uneasily and Gary said, "Relax, come on, Jim," so he let go on purpose, concentrating what was left of his mind.  First one nail and callused fingertip and then the other, then both the first knuckles, were going in and stretching him sideways, farther in and scissoring open and shut.  Jim was hardly breathing, grabbing air between the movements of Gary's fingers but never much at a time, trying to say his name, "G- Gar-" and stretching his legs so far apart that he felt the pull across his thigh muscles. 

"Ssh, Jim, take it easy," Gary said, and his voice was unsteady too.  His lips brushed the side of Jim's knee and then lower down along the thigh, and Jim moved that foot awkwardly, bumped Gary's side and slid across his ribs, wanting every inch of contact he could get. 

"All right," Gary whispered and took his fingers all the way out and put his cock there instead.  Pushed in, agonizingly slowly, leaned forward, pressing Jim's legs up and back until his knees were almost touching his shoulders, and it was a strain but Jim wanted to hold this position all night long.  Gary pulled out and pushed in, out and in harder, and the slick friction was already inflaming, firmer and softer at once than his fingers, but then Gary shifted his grip and pushed in harder again and hit a spot that made Jim nova.  He felt a sound happen in his throat, if he could have called it feeling next to the explosion inside him, but literally did not hear himself, and then Gary kissed him and kept pounding that fiery bursting spot, and all Jim could do was suckle Gary's tongue and try to hear his own whimpers, try to be in contact with the earth, try to get some sensation from his back against the carpet, his hands clutching Gary, and his cock being rubbed between their stomachs, because surely there was something wrong with losing his mind so completely.  "Jim, Jim," Gary whispered against his lips.  Jim felt him shaking, thrusting faster, and then an odd soft gushing pressure and Gary put his forehead against Jim's chest. 

For a little while neither of them moved at all.  Then Jim took what felt like his first real breath since they came into the sim booth, and pushed his thighs against Gary's confining arms.  Gary dragged back and Jim lowered his legs, which he thought would probably hurt like hell in a few minutes, not to mention tomorrow, and his ass hurt now.  He knew he could not sit up yet, but he reached for Gary, grazed his cheek, grasped weakly at the side of his head, and Gary came back to lie on top of him. 

With an enormous effort, Jim rolled onto his side and held Gary to him when he tried to move away.  "Just want to breathe," he said, or meant to, but the words were slurred.  He swallowed, licked his lips, and tried again.  "Don't go anywhere."  There, that was even recognizable Standard.  Any time now he might even get his own voice back. 

"No," said Gary, and his voice sounded choked.  Jim moved his hand, vaguely at first but with growing control, stroking the side of Gary's face and his hair, and kissed between his eyebrows, his forehead, his eyelid.  The lashes seemed wet, and he licked Gary's eye tenderly before he pulled back to look.  Gary stared back gravely, his full mouth held in a slight pout like a child, and Jim kissed him there too, even more gently, little tiny kisses with his lips barely open.  Gary took a deep, shaky breath and then another, closed his eyes, and every part of his body seemed loose and soft.  Jim kissed his forehead again. 

"Jim," Gary whispered like a sigh. 

"Yes." 

"You never did this before." 

"No, not this."  Kissed Gary's eyebrow, brushed the hair the wrong way for the pleasure of its tickling against his lips. 

A sharp exhalation, which Jim thought was meant to be a laugh.  "I think . . . there must be a rule against corrupting innocent cadets." 

"No, don't think so.  But," he smiled when Gary opened his eyes curiously, "I'm sure there is . . . about making a big funky mess . . . in the sim booths." 

"Yeah."  Another half-laugh.  "Yeah." 

But they lay for some time not doing anything about it.  When Gary moved to get up at last, Jim reached out and caught his wrist. Suddenly he _had_ to know:  "You wanted me in Iowa?  Didn't you?  Say it." 

"Yeah."  Gary smiled.  "I did.  I'm not blind.  Sure." 

"Then why _not_?" 

"That farm is your territory.  Sim booths . . . sim booths are mine." 

It was like the time Jim broke his arm and, for a moment, didn't feel anything.  It was like the dream symbols he'd learned about in Psych Self-Exams, which would eventually speak their meanings if the dreamer let them.  The voice in Historical Docs had been ready to pay for something.  Sim booths were Gary's territory. 

He realized by the look on Gary's face that he hadn't intended to say so much.  That meant a good deal, but at the moment Jim felt such a wave of helpless outrage against the no-win scenarios of the universe that he couldn't feel comforted.  He sat up so fast that he didn't notice his own pains and Gary, though he flinched away, couldn't escape, and Jim caught him around the waist and held on as hard as he could, face buried in Gary's side. 

"Oh," said Gary softly, and let his hands fall to Jim's head and shoulder, just resting there. 

Later, Jim would remember this as the moment that he knew, in the back of his mind, that he would reprogram the Kobayashi Maru.  And _win_ it.  
 


	6. Flowers for Ruth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk's adventures, senior year. Ruth reappears.

*********  
**May, Jim's Senior Year, Again**  
*******

Between reprogramming the Kobayashi Maru, beating it, and being called on the carpet (and then commended) for it, Jim was busy for a solid week, and had no time to spend with Gary.  In fact, he'd only gotten one message from him in that week, and Jim had tried hard to believe Gary was studying, or knew Jim was studying, or ... well, it didn't matter any more, because they were both here in the campus pub tonight.  Jim leaned on the bar, with a beer at his elbow, looking into Gary's cola-color eyes and pitching his voice to cut through the noise of the cadets around them. 

But suddenly Gary was distracted, and Jim followed his gaze to the door.  People were streaming in, and one of them was blond and broad-shouldered and loud in a red Security or Engineering uniform, his Irish accent too lilting to be true.  Jim had always suspected Finnegan of putting that accent on.  In fact, he'd said so, once, to another cadet. That was back when he was too new to know how gossip traveled or that Finnegan considered "plebes" fair game.  Then Finnegan heard about it, tracked Jim down, and beat him up, slowly and with a great show of condescension - as if, at twenty, he was doing 15-year-old Jim some favor.  After that, Jim had kept his ideas of authentic ethnicity to himself.  And spent a lot of time trying to evade and cleaning up after Finnegan's ideas of reprisal.  Jim had also found out, around the same time, that Finnegan's father was the Admiral in authority over the training cruises for the Academy, certainly not someone he wanted to offend. 

But surely Gary hadn't come to the Academy until Finnegan had already graduated?  So who was _he_ looking at?  And then Jim saw another blonde head, a complex arrangement of curls and braid, and the head turned and it was Ruth.  Ruth, with Finnegan!  Here! 

She didn't look as if she were having a good time - or, frankly, as if she had chosen to come here.  For one thing, in this mob of cadet uniforms and jumpsuits, short kimono and jeans, singlets and sweats, shorts, tunics and T-shirts, she was in a long formal gown.  It had white lace on one side and black on the other with some sort of orange frill, and she was even wearing long earrings.  Jim shook his head, glad not to have to dwell on it or go on feeling the slight pang it still gave him to look at her.  Gary was right here, with him, and he went back to his interrupted invitation. 

"Anyway, Gary?" - and Gary turned back to Jim - "So there's this two-week break after the end of exams and before the big training cruise, for me anyway - a few people are still taking Kobayashi Marus and so forth, but I'm free, and I thought I'd go home.  Say goodbye to people, see Mom, but mostly bum around.  Want to come along?" 

"Oh, no, Jim baby, Gary can't do that," said that detestable Irish lilt.  Damn, Finnegan always could sneak up on him.  Jim turned in confused irritation and found both of them, Finnegan and Ruth, like ghosts come to haunt him.  "Can ya, Gary?" Finnegan asked, and Jim looked at Gary's miserable expression and knew the main answer, but still not why. For once, Finnegan didn't keep him waiting.  "'Cause he'll be with us in the Finnegan household, home 'n' dry, like usual.  Gary here's practically me adopted brother, didn't ya know, Jimmy?  Me father's taken him under the fam'ly wing.  Admiral Finnegan's proto- _jay_ , here," and Finnegan patted Gary's arm, and Jim felt absolutely ill. Gary knew Finnegan.  And had never said so, though Jim had talked about the pranks and the beating.  Gary knew Finnegan _well_.  How well? 

Gary said nothing at all.  For a dreadful moment, the roar of talk around them swept past and left them stranded, looking at each other. 

"I didn't know that," Jim forced out at last. 

" _Ob-_ viously not, Jimmy me boy," Finnegan gloated, and Jim knew he was being irrational, but he was seconds away from slugging him right in his grinning mouth. 

Gary turned his back on all of them and grabbed his beer, gulping from the mug. 

"Jim," said Ruth in her soft voice, "is there an old jukebox here or not?  I heard there was, but Mick didn't seem to know about it." 

This was not possible for anyone who'd ever been to the pub before, and Jim was certain that Mick Finnegan had been one of its best customers and maybe still was, but this was no time to look a gift excuse in the mouth.  "I'll show you," Jim said and took Ruth's elbow, and they twisted through the talking, laughing crowd. 

The jukebox was an antique, all right, a good 250 years old, and had been elaborately rebuilt around a modern musicvendor, so it still played.  Ruth prompted Jim to tell her everything he knew about it, and under her tact he gradually relaxed a little.  She picked out a favorite song and paid for it, and since it was one they had often danced to, Jim pulled her into his arms when it began, and they swayed together to its beat. 

"Oh, Ruth," he said after a while.  The bittersweet irony of this situation nearly overwhelmed him.  She looked up gravely, and he tried to make a joke of it.  "Fancy meeting you here." 

She smiled sadly. 

"You know," he brushed her jaw with the tips of his fingers, "you look beautiful, but I have to ask - why are you dressed this way?" 

"Mick," she answered, and it was enough, but she went on, "Mick told me we were going to a formal reception and dance.  Even when he picked me up, I didn't get it . . . he's in uniform, after all . . . " 

Jim's mouth was actually open to say that Finnegan was and always had been a mean bastard, but at the last moment he realized she might feel obliged to defend him, and the last thing he wanted to do was quarrel with Ruth. "Oh, Ruth," he said again. 

She put her head on his shoulder and the dance became a straightforward hug.  It occurred to Jim that this tableau might well be Finnegan's plan for Gary, but he didn't care enough at the moment to stop.  Let Gary see.  Let him feel some of the confused bitterness Jim felt now. 

"Jim, when we came in . . . I mean, are you with Gary now?" 

"I don't know," he said, the absolute truth of it frightening him.  "It's all confused.  Oh, Ruth, with you it was so simple, why isn't it simple now?" 

"I don't know either, Jim," she said. 

He made a decision.  He cradled the back of her head in his hand, lightly, feeling the carefully-arranged curls in his palm.  "Ruth," he said tenderly, "let's have one more simple night.  OK?  Wouldn't it make you feel good?  Oh, Ruth, it'd feel so good to me."  He held her shoulders and pulled her back to look at her face, and she didn't look as if she were planning to say no.  "We could really go dancing," he coaxed, and they both smiled. 

"All right, Jim." 

"Call me darling again, sweet Ruth?  Just for tonight?" 

"All right, Jim darling." 

They didn't run into either Gary or Finnegan on their way out. 

Of course, it wasn't as simple as it had been.  The two who were not there were in both their minds, and the limits of their single night stood like walls around them.  Yet Jim did take comfort in being with Ruth, and he thought she enjoyed herself too. 

They went to the reception, after stopping at Jim's dorm so he could change into his dress uniform and pick up his invitation - actually, this event was primarily for graduating cadets, but Jim hadn't intended to go because underclassmen were not invited - and they danced, and ate hors d'oeuvres at a table decorated with orange flowers, real but looking almost exactly like the fabric ones appliqued to Ruth's dress.  Jim scooped one out of the bowl of water where it lay and blotted it on the tablecloth and gave it to Ruth, who laughed and raised it to her face.  Its scent, pleasantly sharp like a marigold but stronger, stayed on Jim's hands. 

She held it until they danced again, and then returned it to the bowl.  This was a slow song, and they moved to hold each other as if the past eight months had never happened, and they were still lovers, and Jim was only waiting for the right moment to ask her to think about marrying him.  Her body warmed through the close-fitting lace.  Actually the outfit was more pantsuit than skirt, Jim realized as the dance pressed them together and their steps intertwined.  Jim felt her legs around one of his, her inseam rubbing against his upper thigh.  He tightened his arm around her waist.  Her breasts were soft against his chest.  She lifted her face to his and he kissed her, just a light pressure. 

It was a relief to be able to just assume, not to have to change the rules.  "Where should we go?" he asked her, certain that she understood exactly what he meant and would answer. 

"I want another dance," she said quietly.  "Then . . . my apartment, if you want." 

She hadn't really called him 'Jim darling' since he'd asked her to. 

The next number was faster-paced, and when he swung Ruth out he could see her nipples erect against the lace, and when they moved around the dance floor he noticed how many other reception guests also saw how beautiful and sexy she was.  And she danced well;  he'd forgotten how much fun it was, dancing with her.  Actually they had two more dances because the next one was slow again and he just gathered her close and rocked her.  So warm and lovely.  "Babe, sweet Ruth," he murmured, and she snuggled closer. 

"Mick calls me that," she said thoughtfully. 

"I guess he's a baseball-history fan too," said Jim, thinking how strange it was to have anything at all in common with Finnegan.  Much less a girlfriend. 

And much less Gary. 

No use thinking about that right now. 

He buried his face in Ruth's hairdo and kissed the top of her head.  The music was ending.  "Ready to go?" he murmured, and she nodded. 

There was a rank of autocabs outside the door and they got in the nearest one.  Ruth keyed in her address.  Then they settled into the seat and each other's arms. 

There was such familiarity in these kisses that Jim fell into them without thought or comparison.  Ruth didn't like the fierce invasion of his tongue;  she lapped and nibbled and sucked at his lips but always pulled back if he moved in too hard.  When she paused, he rubbed his cheek against hers and trailed little, gently-sucking kisses over her jaw and down her neck, brushing aside the wires of her earring, to the inch-wide cloth on her shoulder.  Meanwhile his hands too had been roving, the yielding roughness of the lace a tactile game he enjoyed so much he almost didn't regret that it separated him from her skin. 

He slid his tongue under one strap while his fingers teased at the other, and as she arched her back and neck, he licked down the edge of her neckline to its lowest point, between her breasts but too far above them.  Then over the lace again, and she was leaning back in the corner of the seat as he circled one nipple with his fingertips and the other with his tongue. 

"Oh, yes, Jim," sighed Ruth, "use the lace, it feels so good." 

So he pinched and licked upward a little more, making sure to move the lace against her tightening skin, and then he switched so that his mouth was on her other breast and the cloth he rubbed with his palm was wet.  She moaned.  It seemed forever since he'd done this and it was as easy and satisfying as if he'd never stopped. 

Lace down her side, lace on her round hip, lace in the soft hollow that fluttered with her shallow gasps as he found her navel, so he shifted back into the other corner of the seat and leaned down and used his tongue there too, while his hands moved out and in around her thighs.  The folds of material were a nuisance now, and though he loved brushing the dampness of her lace-covered crotch and hearing someone other than himself say "oh," so helplessly, he wasn't really sorry when the cab stopped and he knew that soon she'd take the lace off and then they'd fuck. 

He sat up but so did she and in a moment she had tightened her legs around him and pulled herself into his lap.  He heard the lace scrape across the cloth of his trousers and felt her fitting herself around the hard lump of his cock.  She squirmed a little and he thrust uncontrollably, his own head back and his eyes half-closed. 

Then she laid her hands flat on his chest and lunged up, off him, past him and out of the cab.  She stood then, visibly shaking, on rain-dark pavement spattered with blue and green from the lights on her building's exoskeleton, while he recovered, sat up, and put a credit chip through the feebox, his own hands unsteady. 

He got out, turned to her and put an arm round her waist, and they were as near as they could be and still walk up the little staircase to her door. 

"When did it rain?" he asked, but she just shook her head, unlocking the door with a swipe of a key card that still reminded him of a little plastic tongue, only flatter. 

The building was really more a boarding house than an apartment complex, and the foyer was furnished with a rug, a coatrack and a little table.  Further down the hall was a ceiling light that edged the objects on the table but gave little sense of what exactly they were, even if Jim had been interested.  Ruth paused, looking, but turned back right away and took his hand, and they went up the stairs to her rooms. 

Again she used the key card, and then the old-fashioned knob like the ones at home in Iowa;  she reached back to the wall to turn on the light manually.  Her bed was still covered with a puffy down comforter and six pillows, and she still had scented candles on the dresser and the windowsill and the table.  She moved to light them and Jim said "Ruth -" in protest at the delay, but she just looked puzzled and he didn't want to argue with her now any more than he had in the pub. 

So she lit them while he sat on the edge of the bed.  Then she turned the overhead light off. "This outfit is complicated to get out of," she said, "and I'd rather not have an audience.  I'll be right back . . . darling," and she smiled over her shoulder, just enough to bring out her dimples in the shifting candlelight, and went into the bathroom. 

Jim took a long breath of the mingled floral odors of the candles, and then got up and began to undress methodically.  The little armchair with the flowers on it was still in the nearest corner and he draped his uniform pants and tunic over the back, and dropped his socks and briefs in the seat, and his boots in front of it.  Ruth hated a mess and this was more or less tidy.  Then he went back to the bed and rolled down the comforter and the blanket, and after looking around a little and not seeing a better place, he put that mass of bedding on the chair too.  Then he went back and sat on the bed again.  After about ten seconds he got up and resettled, back against the heap of pillows at the headboard, displaying himself a bit, touching himself a bit more. 

And then she did come out of the bathroom, and the light behind her made her seem to glow.  She was still wearing lace, but this time a short white negligee that he remembered was tied down the front with little ribbon bows.  She had taken her hair down, so it flowed around her shoulders.  "Oh, Jim," she said with humor and desire plain in her voice, "Are you showing off?" 

"Aren't you?" he asked.  "Come here, Ruth." 

The lace had been fun before but now he wanted her skin, and so he moved to the edge of the bed and, hands on her waist, positioned her between his legs, and kissed the base of her throat, down the channel of her breastbone where the skin was smooth and sweet as milk, down to the first bow, which he untied with his teeth.  She pulled his head up and fed on his lips as she had in the cab, and for a while he let her, gathering her closer and holding her warmth to him.  Then she slid her hands down to his chest and pushed a little, so he sat back, and wetting her lips she slowly pulled the second bow apart.  He smiled.  She untied the third bow and shrugged out of the negligee, and he saw she hadn't even bothered to put on the matching panties. 

He had to have her on the bed now.  He leaned forward, braced his foot against the bedframe, wrapped his arms around her and lifted her clear of the floor, and she squealed, an unlikely sound but a funny one, and they were both laughing as they rolled over into the pillows. 

In a way they were starting all over;  they'd both cooled off a lot since the cab.  But he'd been thinking about her naked body since they danced together at the reception, if not before, and he had a whole mental list of places he wanted to reacquaint himself with.  Her breasts, the right one a little smaller than the left, and the nipple, he remembered, more sensitive - he sucked it now and she writhed under him and he smiled against her skin.  She had a mole up high on her inner arm and he turned her elbow outward to find it and nibbled there too;  that didn't please her as much but he enjoyed it.  Her scent was sharper there, he could smell her sweat under her perfume, and he licked the arm and then the side of her breast to try and get that scent into his mouth and keep it.  She felt for his head and brought it back to the nipple and he suckled again, happy enough there to stay for a while and listen to her little pleased murmurs.  Actually he preferred what he was doing with his hand on the other breast, a rhythmic squeezing motion that reminded him how really soft she was.  She pushed up on his ribs and they shifted around so she could be on top, and she straddled him and leaned her breasts down to his mouth again.  Yes, all right, he could do this for a while more, and she ran one hand up and down his side, lightly and then more firmly and farther up into his armpit, then over onto his chest.  That did feel good.  And better when she pinched one of his nipples, and better still when she wormed her hand between them down to the thicker hair below his waist. 

Now he pushed up on her shoulders and she sat up, looking at him as if she didn't know why.  "Don't tease," he said, and she grinned a little and then grasped his cock with her little thin fingers, her breast glistening in the candlelight where he'd sucked it and her face gone grave and attentive.  He stroked up and down her back and flank and she moved her other hand absently on his chest as she grasped and pulled and milked him into complete hardness.  Then she levered up to lick the tip, just the tip, and he stroked between her ass cheeks and forward into the wetness of her pubic hair, tangling his fingers there and just brushing her labia, which he knew she liked.  One finger farther forward, yes, there - she started and he knew he'd found it, so he backed up and snaked his finger forward again, another little nudge, another, and she almost collapsed across his hips.  Then she sat up in a rush and turned and straddled him, rubbed herself against him and he could feel her wetness on his skin, and he took her by the waist and turned them both on their sides. 

"No, let me, let me," she said and rolled them back, knelt up over him and reached for his cock and opened herself over it with the other hand, and there, the wet folds of her touched him, and there, his hands were on her waist and she was settling down on him, and now she was moving forward and back, up and down, side to side, all over, holding his forearms.  He almost laughed at her wild gyrations, but couldn't because he was groaning and thrusting as far up as he could against the yielding bed. "Oh, oh, oh, o-o-o-o-oh!" she said, her sweet voice rising as he'd heard it so many times before, and then as she always did she announced, "Now, Jim!  Now!" and was still except for little slow shudders that gripped him and sent him over the edge too, and they were climaxing together, something they'd rarely managed.  She rocked forward again, pressing her clit against him, he guessed, and he pulled her down to suck her breast again and she shook a little more.  And then relaxed, as bonelessly as if she were out cold though he knew she wasn't.  He let her nipple slip out of his mouth and rubbed his cheek against it. 

They lay still for a few moments, until he began to wonder if she'd given up asking little goofy questions out of the blue, and then she said, "Why baseball history?" 

Baseball history.  He had to think for a moment, as usual.  Oh, yes, "Baby - 'babe' is like baby, right?  So there was this baseball player, back in the 20th century sometime, named Ruth, called Babe Ruth." 

"Was she famous?" 

"No, sweetheart, it was a man.  Ruth was his last name." 

"Oh."  She was quiet for a few seconds, maybe thinking, but apparently still had trouble with it.  "A man." 

"You're _much_ sexier than he was," Jim said, smiling. 

Another pause.  "If I think about this for a while, will it make sense to me?" she asked. 

"Probably not, it's just a tiny joke.  For me, anyway, it happened by mistake, and then I noticed it and thought it was kind of funny, and then I got used to calling you that and didn't think about it any more." 

"Do you really think that's who Mick is thinking about too, when he calls me Babe?" 

There was something he hadn't really wanted to be reminded of.  "Don't know, Ruth," he said, sighing.  "I never have understood how Finnegan thinks." 

Now, though, he *had* been reminded, and he began to feel that this interlude was nearly over, and to wish for his own bed and his own things around him, and fresher air than this sex-laden flowery smoke.  He stirred, and she pushed herself up onto one elbow and looked down at him.  "You're thinking of going," she said without reproach. 

"A little.  It's nice here," he said, stroking her. 

"It was nice, tonight, with you," she said, and kissed him lightly.  "But if you need to go, I understand." 

He took another deep breath, not sure what he really did need.  But she was right, he couldn't really stay until morning. 

"Well . . . " he said, and she laughed a little and kissed his chin once more. 

"Want to shower first?" 

"Mmm, no, not a shower." 

"Well, use what you want," she said.  "The green towels are fresh." 

So he did get up, and she rolled back into the bed, seeming perfectly contented. 

He didn't shower, which would take too long, and was somehow too domestic.  But he did clean himself up with a damp washcloth and splash cold water on his face to wake himself up, and he wet down his hair and combed it back. 

Then he came out and dressed under her eyes, which felt awkward, but his clothes were on the chair so there was no help for it.  He put the covers back on the bed, too, while she lay there, and that amused them both.  Then he was ready;  she sat up, and he perched on the edge of the bed and took her face between his hands.  "Ruth, you are too sweet," he said.  "You were wonderful to me tonight."  He kissed her forehead.  "Make Mick treat you better." 

"I can take care of myself, Jim.  And I didn't do this tonight just for you." 

"Good, I'm glad you enjoyed it." 

"Couldn't you tell, Jim?  Jim darling?"  And they were both smiling and Jim's heart was hurting, but he did have to leave eventually.  He kissed her one last time. 

"Ruth," he said, heard the longing in his own voice, and stopped.  He thought she'd understand why he didn't say goodbye.  He left the room without looking back, and closed the door behind him in the dark hallway, and the air smelled sharp and lonely.  He took a deep breath of it and went down the stairs. 

Then something else, something familiar, teased his nose just as he was at the front door, and with its handle in his hand, he turned back curiously.  Light came in through the crack in the door and fell gently on the table in the foyer, where one of the same orange flowers lay that he had seen at the reception, and had given Ruth as a joke - but surely she had left that bloom behind?  Yes, he knew she had:  she couldn't have had a flower with her in the cab without his noticing.  Where had this one come from? 

He looked more closely and noticed a sheet of paper nearby.  "Good girl," it said in big black letters, and then initials that were too tangled for Jim to read, like a monogram. 

Jim felt ashamed of himself.  Reading someone else's notes.  He turned away and went through the door, pulling it closed behind him.  He knew the way to the nearest muni stop.  He felt empty and out of place here, and he wanted to get back to the Academy grounds and sleep.  
 


	7. Almost Honest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk's adventures, senior year, beginning later the same night as "Flowers for Ruth."

*********  
**Still May, Jim's Senior Year**  
*******

Jim keyed in his password and the door of his dorm room opened, but the lights weren't on.  He stepped in anyway, saying "Lights," but nothing happened.  "Lights, one hundred percent," he tried again.  The corridor was only half lit for the night but this was a complete, stifling darkness.  "Systems check, lights," he said, expecting to hear the computer say 'Working.' 

"Lights ten percent," said Gary's voice, and a dim illumination showed Jim the suddenly alien space of his own room. 

Gary got up from Jim's bed.  He was naked.  He walked toward Jim slowly, and Jim looked at the body he had only seen like this once before - and then not quite like this. Gary's cock was nearly flaccid, completely covered by the soft sheath of skin, gathered at the tip. 

"I've been doing myself on your bed," said Gary, and now he was right in front of Jim, and then he moved like a guard dog attacking an intruder, and Jim was slammed against the wall, held by Gary's hands on his arms and the cruel glint in Gary's eyes.  "While you were doing the girl." 

Jim responded without having to think:  he was angry himself.  "Right.  She's an old friend.  Ruth." 

"You fucked her.  Don't give me 'old friend.'" 

"I did."  His own hands came up and grabbed Gary's arms.  "I fucked her.  Smell her on me, Gary?  I asked and she said yes and I fucked her and we both enjoyed it.  No secrets, no weeks of wondering.  Are you asking if I'm sorry?  I'm.  Not.  Sorry!"  He was shaking Gary now, and Gary kept his neck straight and glared into Jim's eyes the whole time, riding back and forth in his hands. 

Yet, Jim realized, there was something else beside anger in his face. "No secrets?" asked Gary softly, and the sound crawled up Jim's spine, and he let go. 

But Gary went on.  "Why do you think you ran into her tonight?" 

"What do you mean?" asked Jim, though he thought he knew from the tone of Gary's voice. 

"Mick brought her because I asked him to.  I met you at the pub so he could bring her there.  A set up, Jim.  I did it." 

"Then what the _fuck_ are you so angry about?"  And hurt;  there was pain in the brown eyes too, but Jim couldn't think about that now.  "Was I supposed to bring her here?  Was it a threesome I spoiled?  And what about your adopted brother?  Or is he working the hidden camera?  _Finnegan_!"  he yelled the name, though he didn't really think Finnegan was there.  But then, he'd been wrong before, this evening.  Anyway Finnegan didn't appear. Jim grasped Gary's waist when he tried to step away.  "Set me up!  You've been fucking setting me up all along!" 

"I knew it was an act, all that innocence, all that goodness.  I knew it, I just had to see it, had to see you just walk away."  Suddenly Gary leaned in, slid his arms up Jim's to his neck, bent his head and spoke nearly touching Jim's lips as he had outside the mess hall, "Now stop pretending.  Come down here in the mud with the rest of us." 

Jim pushed him away so hard he staggered, and Jim's own elbows bounced back into the wall.  "Get dressed and get out of here," Jim said. 

Gary stood still, and ran his hand up and down the side of his body.  "You want me to get dressed," he said languidly, and rubbed his chest with the other hand, "do you?"  Both hands down to his thighs, and then up to his nipples, and then, slowly, down over his stomach. 

"Yes," said Jim. 

"And now?"  Gary stroked his cock, running the backs of his fingers along the lengthening shaft.  He took one step, and was under a ceiling light; recessed, its beam came straight down and struck the dark rough hair, the planes of shoulders and the curves of pectoral muscles and arms ... and his cock, rising into the light as he rubbed it, the head reaching out of the foreskin, gleaming. 

Jim swallowed.  "Yes," he said. 

Gary tilted his head back and the light spilled over his face, and he fingered his own balls and thrust his hips forward.  "Say yes again," he said, "you sound so good when you say yes." 

Jim gritted his teeth and ignored his own arousal.  "Gary!"  he snapped.  "Stop it!  For god's sake, I'll call Security if you don't get out!  Now get your clothes on!  I don't know what game you're playing but I'm _not_.  Do you hear me?  Get out of my room and don't ever break in here again.  I'm changing my lock code tomorrow.  Today, I mean." 

Gary's hands slipped away from his cock and he stood straighter, but he didn't move otherwise.  "You can't," he said.  "I changed the access.  I left your lock code as alternate, but it's not the main one any more." 

This wasn't just something Gary would be reprimanded for - if Jim called Security now, Gary would be expelled and arrested.  "You've lost your mind," said Jim.  "What did you think you were doing?  Gary, _why_?" 

"I wanted to come in here," Gary spoke evenly, as if what he was saying were ordinary.  "I wanted to touch everything.  I wanted to try on your clothes and taste your toothpaste.  And jerk off on your bed." 

"Any of that, all of it, if you hadn't broken in, if you hadn't done this," said Jim.  "Did you think I wouldn't let you in?  I've imagined you here over and over.  Gary - " his throat closed.  He shook his head, swallowed, cleared his throat, but his voice was still rough when he spoke again.  "You ruined it.  I want you to go." 

"No, I won't.  Can't," Gary said, voice dropping.  He turned, and the movement seemed aimless;  he wandered to the armchair in the corner and sat in it, then drew up his legs - was he cold? - and curled into the curve of the padding, arms loosely around his knees. 

Jim stepped away from the wall.  "Why not?" 

Gary buried his face in the crook of one elbow. 

Jim looked around for Gary's clothes and finally spotted them in a heap beside the bed.  He went to get them.  Though the dim light made it hard to tell, Jim thought Gary really had jerked off in the tumbled sheets.  He took the clothes over to Gary and crouched down in front of the chair. 

He wanted to be angry but the figure huddled in front of him looked too defeated and lost.  In fact, while he was trying to think of what to say, Gary shivered, and Jim found himself rubbing the chill flank nearest him.  "Gary," he said, and somehow his voice had gone soothing, "Gary, tell me what's going on." 

"Closer," Gary muttered, so low that Jim was already leaning nearer before he registered what the word was. 

"Gary?" he asked, his mind grasping at alternate explanations. 

"Good ... keep rubbing, it looks like sex.  Say something sexy." 

Jim didn't know why he was going along with this, but said, "Gary, your skin feels good." 

"Not real convincing."  Gary rubbed his forehead back and forth on his arm and Jim decided he'd save the comments on Gary's stage direction for later. 

"Gary, baby, why didn't you just tell me?  How you felt?" Jim said in what he hoped was a sexy growl, and leaned even nearer, until his head touched Gary's and he might have been kissing Gary's ear or thereabouts. 

"Finnegan _is_ recording."  The murmur was even quieter. 

"When this is over I'm going to kill you," whispered Jim, meaning it, or anyway meaning something very painful. 

"Finnegan first." 

"You got that right.  Where is he?" 

"Don't know." 

"So let's stop the game and find him." 

"No.  Can't.  Listen, Jim.  It's important.  It's _important._ " 

Jim had never heard him sound so desperate.  "What?" 

"Listen, we have to fool him, we have to fuck." 

"You're kidding." 

"I'm not." 

Jim rubbed Gary's leg and didn't reply. 

"Trust me," Gary said, voice thinning into a whisper. 

Jim sat back, squatting now beside the chair, nearly an arm's length from Gary, who raised his head.  His expression was tragic, and then utterly blank.  Jim cupped Gary's face in his hands, rubbed his thumbs across the full lips, and said for Gary and for the recording, "How can I trust you, baby?" 

Gary's lips parted and one of Jim's thumbs tipped into his mouth.  Jim pushed in, feeling Gary's teeth and tongue, and Gary sucked the thumb for a second and then bit down, hard enough to make Jim jump and pull his thumb back out.  "Don't call me baby," said Gary, a glint in his eyes. "Call the blonde bitch anything you want but call me by my name." 

Jim slid his hands to grasp Gary's whole head and stood, pulling Gary up, and Gary awkwardly followed.  Jim wasn't being gentle, and he pulled Gary's face to his and kissed him, teeth hard enough against teeth to bruise both sets of lips between, and Gary grabbed handfuls of Jim's back and squeezed hard.  "Gary," Jim said when he broke the kiss, and then bit Gary's chin, not as hard as Gary had bitten his thumb, and said "Gary," again, and bit high up on Gary's cheek, harder.  "Gary."  No, it wouldn't be hard to fuck him.  Now when he pulled back, there was a different glint in Gary's eyes, which Jim thought were watering from the pain. 

"You have something with you, I hope," Jim said to him.  "Because otherwise I'm fucking you dry." 

"Had it with my clothes," said Gary, "did you lose it?" 

"You look," Jim said, and pushed him away. 

He was going to strip for the recorders.  He didn't know how he felt about it or why he was doing it.  But before he could unfasten his dress tunic, Gary grabbed him by the forearms and said, "Don't think you're running this." 

Several things to say, more or less to Gary and to Finnegan's recording, went through Jim's mind.  He chose one almost at random.  He reached out for Gary, ran his hands firmly down the bare chest and stomach and upper thighs, then up his sides, then drew him closer and rubbed down again to his ass, then up again until one hand cupped the back of Gary's head and the other curved over his shoulder, his own fingers even with his eyes.  All this time Gary had stood still.  Jim said, pitched to carry beyond their embrace, "I want to.  Let me."  Slid one hand down again, slowly, slipped his fingers into the crack of Gary's ass, rubbed in and out of it.  Gary sighed and leaned his forehead against Jim's hair.  "Yes, let me.  Yes.  Tell me.  This excites you.  You want me this way." 

"I ... want you," said Gary, not qualifying it but sounding almost honest.  As honest, maybe, as either of them could be tonight. 

"Gary."  Jim rewarded him with a better kiss, moving swiftly into his mouth but not trying to hurt him, licking at Gary's tongue and sucking it into his mouth, holding him.  Holding his ass again, circling his hands on the cheeks, squeezing them, almost the massage he'd imagined in Iowa.  But it would be better not to think of Iowa. 

Jim reached between them and pulled Gary's half-erect cock upward, between their stomachs.  Then he took Gary's hips in his hands and fit his cock between Gary's thighs, and rubbed against him, rubbed the cloth of his pants against Gary's skin and his own.  It felt rough even to Jim, and Gary squirmed as if to move away but Jim held him.  Then Gary began to work his hands into Jim's clothes, moving the hem of the tunic up, sliding his hands into Jim's waistband and trying to work around to the fly, and soon they were struggling, Jim to hold their position and Gary to undress Jim.  Gary scratched his nails up the skin of Jim's back, and Jim shivered all over, once, and again. 

"This is what you want too," said Gary, staring down into Jim's eyes, and Jim couldn't have denied it even if there had been no tape to record his answer.  Gary in his room, in his bed \- he hadn't been lying when he said he'd fantasized it. 

Jim's stillness let Gary slip his hands around between them and in a moment Jim's pants were unfastened and Gary was pushing them down, palms flat against Jim's legs.  Warm.  Strange, Jim thought, how even though Gary had seemed so cold in the armchair, his hands now were so warm.  Gary took off Jim's boots and tossed them, and then the pants, away.  Jim's hands settled on the sides of Gary's head, moved in circles around his ears, in his hair.  Gary knelt up and took Jim's cock in his mouth as simply as if he did it every night.  For all Jim knew - the bitter thought ambushed him - Gary did do this with someone every night.  Jim stepped back, pulling himself from Gary's mouth.  The air was chill on his wet cock. 

Gary looked up, and then stood, and they stared at each other. 

"Bring the lights up," said Jim. 

"Lights, forty percent." 

That was better, not glaring but much brighter than Ruth's bedroom.  "I want this to be different," he said right out of that thought.  "I want to change the rules.  I want a scenario I can win.  We can win."  Gary raised his chin and Jim stepped in again and held the sides of his face, felt the warmth of his body, looked into his eyes.  "Come with me.  I've _been_ in the mud, I'm a farm boy.  That's where things grow, Gary."  He pulled Gary's head down to his shoulder and spoke directly into his ear.  "This is ours if we make it ours.  Forget Mick.  Make love to me."  He kissed Gary's ear, probing and tracing its curves, and Gary quivered and kissed Jim's neck, then swung his head up and it was just Gary and Jim, they were alone, Gary tasted so good and he was licking fire into Jim's mouth, it felt like, and holding Jim's waist under the tunic, hands nearly spanning the small of Jim's back.  Jim's hands were all over Gary's skin until he scarcely knew what he was touching. 

Gary broke the kiss and ducked his head and took a fold of Jim's tunic between his teeth as if to tear it, then let go.  "Take this fucking _shirt_ off," he said breathlessly. 

Jim moved his arms to do it and Gary stepped back once to let him, and then again, eyes huge and fixed on Jim, and then seemed to force his head to one side, then the other.  Looking for his clothes, Jim supposed. 

Jim pulled the tunic over his head and dropped it, then strolled past Gary, nearly touching him, to bend over the heap of clothes by the armchair.  Gary watched him.  Jim found the soft gelpack of lube and brought it back, walking out of his way to brush past Gary again, to the bed where he stripped off the wet, tangled topsheet and cover.  Gary was right behind him now, and took the gelpack from his hand as he turned, opened it, and cupped one of Jim's hands in his own to spurt the clear gel into it.  Then he moved his hand away just far enough to put gel in his own palm too.  He dropped the pack and reached for Jim's cock with both hands, stroking and lifting it and, as it hardened more and stood up, smoothing on the gel.  Jim swayed on his feet with the delicious swelling, slippery feeling, and pressed his empty hand flat on Gary's shoulder, urging him to the bed. 

Gary sat and then lay down and then rolled away onto his side.  He lifted one leg, and Jim rubbed gel between his fingers and then there, between Gary's cheeks, back and forth and around the opening and into it, and Gary pushed back almost immediately, taking the whole finger faster than Jim would have put it in.  Jim kissed his shoulder and massaged his ass and wanted another pair of hands to stroke the rest of him, he was so beautiful in the half-light, his dark head tousled and his back beginning to arch and his hands on his own cock. 

Two fingers now, and Jim remembered to tuck the nail of the index finger against the front of the middle finger and he moved them in and out in smooth sweeps, and Gary rocked back and forth.  Jim couldn't see well enough, so he murmured into Gary's ear, "On your stomach," and kissed him on the neck and then near the spine as he moved.  Gary grabbed the pillow and stuffed it under himself, and Jim knelt between the strong thighs and stroked them, then separated Gary's ass and looked at the glistening opening.  He felt a little awkward as he used his hand to position his cock, but he was new to this too and feeling awkward now was better than hurting Gary by not being in the right place.  He pushed a little and Gary pressed his shoulders into the mattress, tilting his ass up even farther, and Jim leaned over and licked his back as he rocked in, a little, a little more, hands holding Gary's hips and then sliding up his sides and then back down to his hips for each new stroke.  The way Gary gripped him was unbelievable and the way his profile looked, eyes closed and lips ajar against the mattress, was beyond what Jim had imagined.  He wished he could reach to kiss Gary, or even that he'd let Jim call him by any of the silly, sweet names so easy to use for girls like Ruth, but instead Jim thrust deeper and Gary braced his hands and pushed back. 

"Yeah, Jim, fuck harder," Gary said, eyes still closed, "harder, harder!" 

And Jim did, sweating and straining, hearing the slap and feeling the jolt of each thrust, and Gary really was on all fours now, and the bed creaked under them.  Tighter, faster, harder, and Jim knew it wouldn't take him long now - a few more - maybe one more \- "Gary!" he cried, coming, "Gary!" and collapsed onto Gary's bent back. 

Gary twisted under him and spilled him onto his side.  Jim heard a wet sound as his cock slipped from Gary's ass.  Feeling wrung out, Jim lay unmoving, eyes closed, as the bed tilted under him.  Then he was rolled onto his back and felt a knee on each side of his ribs, and when his eyes opened, the first thing he focused on was Gary's hard-on hovering over him. The foreskin had retracted and the broad head was completely bare, the color of a cherry caramel. 

Jim had seen a picture of someone lying flat and being mouth-fucked - it hadn't looked like anything he wanted to try tonight.  He stroked up Gary's legs until his hands were flat against Gary's pelvis and his forearms braced against Gary's thighs, for the contact but also for the leverage.  Gary was staring at him, just staring, his face in shadow.  Then suddenly he bent down and buried his face in Jim's tangled hair to murmur, "Mick wanted face-fucking." 

Jim turned toward him, said, "We're not doing this for Mick," and pushed, and again harder when Gary resisted.  Then he let himself roll onto his side and Jim put his fingers into Gary's sweaty hair and kissed him, face and throat and chest, hands on his skin and licking some of the sweat there, and then again because it tasted so good and because Gary fell onto his back and said "Oh," and moving on, Jim felt a little dizzy but couldn't tell whether it was tiredness or the nearness of Gary's cock or the feeling of Gary pliant under his mouth and hands.  He felt like dropping to sleep and he felt like he couldn't possibly ever stop touching Gary. 

Tasting Gary.  He nearly was.  This was something he'd done before though he was no expert. He settled on one elbow and wrapped the other hand around Gary's cock and took the head into his mouth.  As always it felt twice the size it had looked.  Smelled musky and exciting.  Tasted salty and ... Jim couldn't have described it except that it was so different than a woman tasted, so good and more Gary somehow than his face was.  Jim sucked and licked and sucked again, and Gary tightened and relaxed the long muscles in his thighs, not really thrusting, and Jim rocked the heel of his hand against Gary's balls and tongued him in every way he could think of, even tucking under the band of the foreskin, which seemed to jolt Gary each time Jim did it.  Gary moved his hips faster and took gasping, short breaths and Jim could feel him getting to the edge, hanging there for a few seconds that seemed to take much longer, and then coming in the rush that always startled Jim a little, and he took a lot of it in his mouth but pulled back an inch or so and a lot spilled out too, back down Gary and onto Jim's hand. 

"Oh, Jim," came Gary's voice, sounding far away and full of such mixed feelings that Jim couldn't tell what they were.  Jim wiped the back of his hand on Gary's thigh, the nearest dry spot, and licked at the semen.  " _Jim,_ " said Gary in surprise and pleasure and so Jim kept going, leisurely, cleaning Gary off with his tongue and, for variety, his fingers, while Gary rubbed his shoulder and head and whatever was under his hand.  He looked as exhausted as Jim felt. 

The very thought of talking was too much to face though Jim knew that once he wasn't quite so wiped out, he'd want to slam Gary into the nearest wall and make him say everything, _everything_ he'd been withholding, his whole damn life story if Jim could get it out of him.  He shoved weakly at Gary who slid over very slowly, and Jim reached around the mattress and pulled the edge of the sheet out and around them as far as it would go when he was pressed full length against Gary.  Jim was damned if he was leaving this bed for a long while and didn't want to be colder than he had to be. 

When Jim was just dropping off, Gary got up, and Jim made a sound of protest and held on as much as he could, which wasn't much at the moment.  Gary smoothed his hair and kissed his temple, and then after a second's pause, kissed his forehead and his cheek lingeringly before he got up anyway, and Jim fought his way out of sleep and pushed himself halfway up on his elbows to see Gary vanish into the bathroom.  That was probably all right, so Jim collapsed to the bed again, and was nearly asleep when Gary climbed in, pulling something over them as he settled back against Jim.  Warm.  Good.  Jim turned toward him and slipped down into real sleep at last.


	8. Morning Has Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk's adventures, senior year, morning after "Almost Honest."

*********  
**Still May, Jim's Senior Year**  
*******

There are dreams that don't let go easily, and yet don't rest in memory.  It was that kind Jim woke from, very slowly, as if pulling each small piece of consciousness away from the clinging web of the dream.  He was wrapped closely in bedcovers.  Light lay on his eyelids.  He was alone in the bed. 

Why was that strange? 

He opened his eyes and the view was the same as always.  He took a deep breath, letting his eyes close again, wondering what time it was but not wanting to roll over and look at the chronometer.  He wished the room had a window.  It was easier to get up when there was sunshine, or anyway natural light. 

Light.  He'd left his on, apparently.  Weird. 

A sound in his ears.  Again.  Small, nagging, repeated in little bursts, a kind of tapping, then a pause, then again.  Like little footsteps on some very smooth surface.  Mice dancing.  No, too small for that.  Ants.  Ants tap-dancing.  He heard a longer burst of the sounds now, rippling, and he was too curious to lie still.  He lifted his head carefully and forced his eyelids open. 

OK, the end of the bed was just as usual.  Sort of.  Bedding all twisted, and this was the spread over him.  The sound was coming from - 

"Oh," he said aloud, though not much sound came out.  Gary was at Jim's computer terminal, doing manual entry.  He had on his pants but no shirt, and his hair was wildly rumpled as if he'd gone there straight from the bed.  Jim's bed.  Jim began to remember. 

What was Gary doing to the computer? 

"Gary," said Jim, sitting up. 

Gary tapped at the keypad a little more before he turned.  Looked at Jim, his eyes as warm as if he hadn't broken into Jim's dorm room and slammed him against a wall and gotten him into God only knew what kind of weird shit with Finnegan and some sort of vid recording of Jim and Gary having sex. 

Jim remembered saying, early on, 'When this is over, I'm going to kill you,' and it looked like it was time to do it. 

Except that Gary was smiling at him. "Hullo."  Smiling, and getting up, and sitting at the edge of the bed, and touching Jim as if they were ordinary lovers.  "You have no idea," said Gary, "how incredible you look when you're asleep."  Gary's arm around him, his hand warm on Jim's back, the other hand smoothing back his hair, loving.  He hadn't known Gary could be so loving.  "Yeah," Gary said.  "I've never, ever seen anything like it." 

"Is the recorder still on, or do you want something new?" asked Jim quietly, the pain of Gary's tenderness and falsity raging in him like fire. 

Gary went rigid as stone, and didn't move at all.  The hand at Jim's back, the other on Jim's neck, simply rested there as if no longer animate. 

It was amazing how everything Gary did had the power to move Jim so deeply. 

Jim took Gary's hand off his neck, and held it when Gary would have pulled it away, and gripped Gary's other shoulder as hard as he could.  "It's time you talked to me," he said. 

"No," Gary said, and then added before Jim had time to protest, "it's time I showed you."  After a moment he leaned in and kissed Jim, mouth closed and lips soft, almost as Jim had kissed Ruth when he knew it was the last time.  Jim pulled back in a kind of panic, but Gary was looking at him so intensely that he thought it couldn't be that - and even now he didn't want it to be that.  Gary ran one finger along Jim's lower lip, watching it, then looked back up into his eyes.  "Uh-huh," Gary said, and then sat up and took a deeper breath, not quite a sigh.  "You've got clean civvies, right?  Put some on.  Nothing fancy.  Can I borrow a shirt?" 

Too much like Gary last night, saying he wanted to touch Jim's things and wear his clothes, sounding crazy.  And with Gary's shoulder under his hand Jim realized that nothing he owned would be big enough anyway.  He shook his head. 

"A T-shirt?"  Gary persisted.  "You haven't got an old stretched-out one?  We can't wear uniforms where we're going." 

"You've got clothes, Gary.  We're not on Mars.  Go to your room and get some." 

A pause.  "Yeah."  Gary looked down at his hand in Jim's, then up at Jim's face.  "I just . . . I woke up and you were right there, right with me, you hadn't even rolled away.  And I thought, this is Jim, he's . . . . " He looked down again. 

Jim wanted to pull Gary's head onto his shoulder.  Or he wanted to kick him right off the end of the bed. Wanted to feel Gary's mouth parting under his tongue, or Gary's lip splitting under his fist.  Anger flashed in his mind like a lighthouse beacon.  He took his hands away and used them to pull himself backward on the sheet, and Gary looked up warily but without surprise. 

Neither spoke. 

Gary got up and went back to the desk.  Just brushed the edge of the keypad with his fingers.  "I put your access code back the way it was," he said, not looking at Jim. 

"For now," Jim added. 

Gary's fingertips traced the length of the pad, slipped to the surface of the desk.  "Will it make a difference if I promise not to do it again?" 

Jim did think, but could only say, "I don't know.  Will a promise make any difference to you?" 

Gary didn't move for several seconds.  "Should I just go?" he asked then. 

Jim imagined it.  Tried to.  His life back the way it was - when?  October?  Going to the campus pub, to parties, cruising around, waiting to be attracted? 

Never finding out what had happened last night?  No, impossible, he was already involved there. 

So it wasn't a real option even if Gary had offered it honestly. 

"Show me how you did it," Jim said at last. 

Gary grinned.  "It won't be hard for the man who hacked the Kobayashi Maru," he said. 

It didn't even take long.  Once Jim knew, once he'd been shown, he could see how vulnerable the whole system was.  "This is terrifying," he said.  "We should tell somebody." 

"Still trying to get me thrown out?" Gary asked, but with humor. 

"No, but . . . " 

Suddenly Gary's face was pressed against his, and Gary's breathy laughter was right in his ear.  "Oh, Jim, you're priceless," he said, "you just never stop . . . " and kissed him, on the skin between ear and sideburn, then on the cheekbone, then beside the nose, his arms sliding around Jim's bare waist, his fingers into the tops of the briefs Jim had pulled on when he got out of bed.  Jim felt tickled, electrified, turned on - and completely suspicious.  He got his hands on Gary's shoulders and held him off. 

This close, he could see how Gary looked at his eyes one after the other, then at his lips, then licked his own, and Jim knew he had about one second to ask, "Is this for real?"  Gripped harder, shook him, repeated it.  "Gary.  Is it?  Real?" 

"Yes," said Gary clearly, still looking at Jim's mouth. "Real.  The realest thing.  Ever."  And then as Jim had known would happen, Gary's lips brushed his, pressed closer, parted, and Jim found his head tipped back and his mouth full of Gary's tongue and his throat vibrating with a wanting sound. He was still angry, he reminded himself, but his cock had reminders for him too, and he slid off the computer chair and he and Gary were on the floor and rubbing against each other as if they had both forgotten that Gary's pants and Jim's briefs were in the way. 

Dimly Jim remembered that Gary had said something about getting dressed and going somewhere, something about showing Jim, and he got as far as "Weren't we -" and the feel of Gary's sliding body and the sight of Gary's throat stretched out above him simply . . . stopped Jim from caring.  Instead of finishing the sentence he moved his head up and licked the throat, kissed it, and Gary's elbows gave and they rolled over.  Jim straddled Gary and rubbed against him, and with each movement they both got harder and the cloth between them more damp.  It felt good to do it but even better to look down at Gary and see him lose himself in the feeling.  Gary moved his arms above his head and then out to the sides until he found the leg of the desk to hold on to, and just put the other palm flat on the floor.  His eyes slid shut and he moaned, and after a pause moaned again, rocking his hips, moving his fingers against the floor as if trying to dig them in. 

He was so out of control that Jim got a little of his own brain back, and he knelt and held Gary's hips down when he pushed up, nipped him above the waist while he was undoing the pants and pulling them down. Gary wasn't wearing underwear.  Jim's cock strained anew against his briefs as he slid the waistband over Gary's hips, breathed in the scent still heavy from last night, and saw Gary's cock hard and his foreskin rolled back.  Gary writhed under his hands and Jim loved it, loved every movement and every sound he made. 

"Suck me again, Jim," Gary said.  And of course Jim could do that without needing to move them to the bed or find the lube, without even having to take his own briefs off. 

If he wanted to just do what Gary told him. 

But of course it wasn't like sucking him was any sort of hardship. 

While Jim was thinking, or doing what passed for thinking at the moment, he was stroking the hard length of Gary's cock, now grasping and squeezing, now just tracing the veins with his fingers or playing with the foreskin, feeling its softness, pulling it up and smoothing it back, and Gary was thrusting up into his hands and still begging, "Your mouth, Jim, suck me, Jim . . . " a sound that was undeniably sweet.  Gary wanted it;  Jim wanted it;  what was Jim waiting for? 

He rubbed the wrinkles around the foreskin's band as he lapped at the satin-slick head, then wrapped his lips around it and moved the skin over the shaft up and down as he sucked.  Jim developed a rhythm, strong pulls as Gary thrust up, tonguing the head in between, and then Gary's speed increased and Jim couldn't keep up. 

So he stopped.  Pulled his mouth off, lifted his head, looked at Gary, who tried to follow Jim's mouth but had to drop back, groaning, "Ohhh," and then, "Don't stop."  And then, " _Please._ " 

Music. 

"Cool down," Jim said, voice low and anything but cool.  "I'm going to take your pants off." Gary reached for him and Jim retreated, beyond his fingers' touch unless Gary sat up. 

He didn't sit up.  Jim pulled the pants completely down and off, not fast but not too excruciatingly slowly, without letting his hands touch Gary's skin.  He pushed the mound of cloth out of the way and skinned out of his briefs as well, and then sat at Gary's feet looking at him. 

Gary put his forearm over his eyes.  "What?" he asked. 

"Don't hide," said Jim, and Gary slowly put the arm down.  Jim's gaze swept from his half-lidded eyes down the damp skin of his chest and stomach to his cock, which was shrinking back into its covering skin. 

"I wish I'd seen you sleeping," said Jim, and picked up Gary's ankles and moved them apart so he could kneel in between them.  He was completely aware of Gary's body, the sandpaper-rough skin on the outside ankles and the smoother skin on the inside ones, under his thumbs - his fingertips slid back to the tough Achilles tendons before he set the feet down, not touching his own legs. Gary took a quick, deep breath but lay still.  He was almost flaccid now.  Jim ran his fingers along the warm calf muscles, in the curling hair, and saw Gary's cock move, a little.  So he kept doing it, for a while, slowly. 

"I like that you're not cut," he said.  "You know, a girl I went down on had these amazing lips, I mean on her cunt. They were kind of like your skin.  They closed around her, they even twisted a little at the end, like I bet you do when you're really not up at all." 

"You may never know," said Gary.  He moved his arm again, bent it under his head, and settled as if to show he was willing to watch Jim for a long time. 

Jim tried not to smile but his mouth stretched a little anyway.  He slid his fingers up to the backs of Gary's knees and circled in that smooth, tender skin.  Jim couldn't see the little jolts through Gary's body but his knees raised a tiny bit each time.  And his cock was longer, more of the head showing. 

"The first guy I blew," Jim went on, feeling a strange need to establish that he had a past too, "grabbed my ears and shoved so hard down my throat that I really thought I'd vomit.  It wasn't good." 

"Bet not." 

"I thought of it last night." 

Gary's voice was gentle.  "I'm better than that.  When I face-fuck." 

"I've taken it deep since, but it never does much for me." 

"We'll see, sometime." 

Jim pressed his fingers up between tendons to the muscles on the backs of Gary's thighs, as if that were an answer. And perhaps it was.  And perhaps Gary's legs closing on him made another kind of promise.  One or both aroused Jim, but he clamped down on it.  He wasn't ready. 

"Jim," Gary said, and then paused, and then asked, "Do you want me to beg again?" 

"No, lie still." Not yet, he meant. He had moved up between Gary's legs, and they were snug around him now.  "I waited so long to touch you. You made me wait so long."  His palms moved flat on Gary's furry thighs, back and forth, over and over, and it was almost like stroking himself. 

Gary let his head fall back to the floor, and his arms lay limp above it.  His eyes were shut.  He opened his mouth, said nothing, licked his lips.  "For this," he said at last. 

"Yes," Jim said.  Absolutely for this, this abandonment, the way Jim's hands were the only thing that moved Gary, the way his lips hung slack and his cock stood up, the way Jim's hands could cup the bones of Gary's hips and circle there, and now, the way turning fingertips slightly toward the groin made Gary's head jerk suddenly and a new, lower groan come from his mouth.  Jim bent over Gary's erection and it strained upward as if it knew he was so near. He breathed on it and Gary's stomach contracted - he was evidently trying that much not to groan again. 

Jim was holding onto himself so hard that his breath was making a slight wheezing sound.  He lowered his head, pulling outward on Gary's thighs, letting his hair brush Gary's cock but otherwise not touching it. Lower, and he put out his tongue and licked the nubbly skin of Gary's balls, and Gary shook with every stroke.  It was like licking dried ice-cream, the way it dissolved so fast the shape of it changed with a touch, because Gary's balls were tightening, changing, hotter, every time Jim's tongue found them again.  Jim slid his hands under Gary's ass and felt the muscles rigid as they could go, hard as the floor beneath them, and when he raised his head Gary made a sound that brought the hair up on the back of Jim's neck. 

Neither of them could wait longer.  Gary couldn't beg now, but Jim didn't need the words now anyway.  He took one last look at the surrender in Gary's face and then closed his eyes and gulped over his cock, opening his throat and stretching his lips to the hair at the base, grabbing Gary's ass and rubbing himself helplessly on the carpet as Gary immediately came, jetting so far into Jim that he couldn't taste any of it, could scarcely feel more than the pulse of it and the power of having made this happen.  And for now that was enough, and his own cock twitched and spasmed under him. 

When it was over, Jim let Gary's cock slip out of his mouth, pushed himself up between Gary's legs, and looked down at the semen blobs and smears on the carpet and at his cock, chafed redder than in arousal by the tight-woven fiber.  It did hurt, had stung at the time, but then he'd been too far gone to care. 

It looked like Gary still was. Or maybe it was a kind of shame that kept him lying with his eyes shut while Jim sat up. After a few more seconds with no response from Gary, Jim got to his hands and knees and crawled up Gary's side, bent over his head, picked it up with both hands and turned it face upward.  Gary opened his eyes but his expression was unreadable. 

"Gary?" Jim asked.  "Are you OK?" 

"Do you remember," said Gary slowly, "me telling you to let me go?  In Iowa?"  His head was a dead weight in Jim's hands, and his arms and legs were still sprawled where orgasm had left them. 

"I remember.  I didn't know what you meant." 

Gary blinked.  "It's too late now," he said.  "To let go.  It was already too late then. If you let go now, Jim, I'll fall.  I'll fall - " he gasped, and struggled up to clutch at Jim wildly, and Jim held on as Gary tried to press every part of his body into Jim, holding so tightly that Jim could hardly breathe, or perhaps that was only the surge of feeling taking him like a wave.  Gary's face was pushing so hard against Jim's neck and collar bone that Jim could barely understand him when he said, "Don't let go." 

"No," said Jim, holding him. 

"Don't." 

Jim grasped the back of Gary's head, put his cheek down into the hair too, and said, "No, I won't.  I won't let go." Without really meaning to, he found himself rocking back and forth, not much, but enough to soothe both of them.  It took a long time, though, before Gary's arms began to loosen, his muscles softened, and he gradually relaxed in Jim's arms.  And then, although Jim stopped rocking, they still rested together. 

Separating was like waking up, like recovering from orgasm, like returning to a daily life profoundly though invisibly changed.  Jim wasn't sure which of them began to move, and it was a slow process, with pauses between each lowered arm, each shifted leg.  They couldn't look at each other's faces.  When both were kneeling on the carpet with a foot or so between them, Gary rubbed his face with both hands as if to dry it, though Jim knew he had not wept. 

If Jim had held on to anyone that way, he'd have felt like the world's fool when he got over it, and so when Gary let his hands fall on his thighs and sat looking at the carpet, Jim wanted to make that distress go away too.  He bent forward, lowering his head, and kissed the back of Gary's nearer hand, and then rocked back, got to his feet, and touched the back of Gary's head lightly as he said, "I'm hungry.  Are you?" 

"Yeah," Gary said without looking up. 

"Well, do you want to shower?  And I could look and see if I've got anything that'll go over these shoulders of yours."  He just brushed one with the tips of his fingers as he spoke. 

"You go first," said Gary, and his voice was sullen.  "It's your bathroom." 

Jim crouched down again, now behind Gary, put his lips to the nape of Gary's neck, murmured, "You're not fooling me, Mitchell," and then kissed him. Gary's whole body seemed to resonate with the slight movement of Jim's lips, and Jim touched his forehead to the same place, just for a moment, and then stood again, euphoria rushing through him like laughter. "OK," he said, "I'll go first if you want.  There are some stupid games in my computer memory if you don't have anywhere new to hack into.  Or I've got a chess program too, though I'm not taking that long a shower." 

"OK," Gary said.  Jim left him to whatever private recovery he needed. 

He washed himself vigorously but impatiently.  He was happy, his earlier anger only a memory, and he was certain they'd figure out something to do about Finnegan. He wanted to get out in the sunshine with Gary.  He wanted to see Gary smile.  There were a million things he wanted, and they could only start after he got out of this shower.  He turned the water colder, reminding himself that he couldn't just leap on Gary the minute he got out there.  Actually, the coolness felt good where he'd rasped his skin on the carpet. 

When he turned to step out of the shower cubicle he found Gary seated on the head, waiting for him.  Last night that would have felt ominous.  Now Jim assumed that Gary felt the same as he did, would rather be in the same room instead of separated even by a wall. 

Jim stood still, smiling, dripping, and let Gary look him over.  When Gary's expression didn't change and he didn't move, Jim's smile slipped a little, but he refixed it and asked, "Hand me the towel?" 

Gary passed it to him without comment.  Jim put it over his head and dried his hair.  At least then he didn't have to think about what was on his face, or what was on Gary's, for that matter. He turned toward where he knew the towel rack was - a habit, he always seemed to face the towel rack - and dried his chest and his arms, and as he bent forward to dry his legs he felt Gary's tongue on the small of his back, where the shower water still clung.  Jim stopped dead.  Gary licked twice, and smiled against his skin.  Then he took the towel from Jim's loosened hands and as Jim stood up, began to dry from shoulders to waist. 

Jim began to suspect that Gary meant him to be off-balance permanently.  Surely that should be worrying.  Yet as he stood under the terrycloth, pushed this way and that by Gary's hands, he didn't worry about it. And when Gary passed the towel to him again and stepped behind him into the shower and closed the panel between them, all without a word, Jim wasn't surprised. 

Jim hadn't done it on purpose, but he suspected it was a useful attitude to cultivate.  While he was with Gary.  He touched the closed shower-panel with the tips of his fingers and saw Gary's vague pale shape turn toward him, the pattern of the splashing water altering, washing the panel from new angles.  But neither spoke.  Then Jim hung up his wet towel and got Gary a dry one, and left the bathroom.  



	9. How the Other Half Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirk's adventures, senior year, same day as "Morning Has Broken." This chapter contains a rather grim vision of Federation social services.

*********  
Still May, Jim's Senior Year  
*** 

They got out of the muni at a stop that had been newly built, on a clean, sharp-cornered slab of concrete.  At its edge were flower boxes planted with petunias in glaring colors and strewn with little bits of paper and other small debris.  The buildings on this street were similarly bright-colored but not completely cared for:  the grass in front of one too high;  the new paint on another not quite matching the old. 

Gary walked briskly and with assurance down the block, Jim following with the bag Gary had asked him to carry over his shoulder;  it was lumpy, but not heavy.  Gary's own similar bag swung and thumped softly as he strode.  Gary pushed impatiently at the sleeves of the sweater Jim had lent him, greyed and stretched out in the laundry freshman year, and resettled the bag, still walking.  Then, suddenly, he darted across the street, seizing the moment when no vehicles were in sight, and went between two ancient storefronts, through a tiny alley like a burrow.  Jim thought of a rabbit hole.  They emerged into a small parking lot where the paving was cracked and small, sticklike weeds straggled onto the old concrete;  there was only one flitter parked there, but five or six more or less rusty bicycles.  A wider alley beyond led them to a steeper, and considerably less busy, street. 

Here everything looked patchworked, concrete and stone and sheet-metal and brick and plastiform all jumbled together, from the walks underfoot up the sides of the buildings. People sat on stairs and in the shade, and walked at various speeds along the pavement or in the street.  There were practically no flying vehicles, and not even many wheeled ones;  that--plus the broken-out windows Jim saw from time to time--gave the scene a weirdly deserted air in spite of the pedestrians.  Sometimes voices called out, perhaps to Jim and Gary, but Jim couldn't really understand what they said and Gary didn't respond. 

Gary turned again, and they climbed in a new direction, then went down, then up again.  He didn't seem to need the street-signs, which was fortunate:  not many were intact.   Eventually they went up a steep, narrow stair between cracked brick walls and arrived on a kind of plateau, like nothing Jim had expected. 

In a large, clear, paved space was a building complex made of metal, like a vast sculpture installation.  It looked almost lacy and gleamed a pale cream color.  Accents of gilt and purple and red were picked out behind the elaborate superstructure, interspersed with ebony-black panels.  When Jim looked more closely he saw that the lace was made of pipes and the panels were solar-power catchers.  The other dark patches were windows.  It was an odd design, but eye-catching and cheerful. 

The paving around it dipped near the building walls, as if they had moats, though the spaces were dry;  other parts of the paved yard rose into curved seats and tables.  There were trees in pots, though they didn't seem to be growing very well.  All this open space, however, was full of activity and mess - mattresses, blankets and rugs rolled up or spread out, furniture stacked and draped with clothes or topped with boxes, people everywhere, more than Jim had seen on the whole way from the muni stop, talking and running and carrying and arguing. 

Suddenly a huge voice came from the buildings, obviously some sort of loudspeaker.  People yelled back and covered their ears and generally acted as though they had often heard it before and did not want to hear it now.  "RESIDENTS VACATE IMMEDIATELY," it said. "CLEANING PROCEDURE WILL BEGIN IN ONE HOUR.  CLEANING FLUID IS TOXIC.  REPEAT.  CLEANING FLUID IS TOXIC.  RESIDENTS VACATE IMMEDIATELY.  REMOVE ALL POSSESSIONS. CLEANING FLUID WILL DAMAGE YOUR THINGS. CLEANING FLUID WILL HURT YOU.  LEAVE NOW." 

As the blast of sound died down, Jim heard a voice nearer, on a more human scale.  "Professor!  Professor!" 

Gary turned this time, and smiled.  A child - or perhaps not a child - ran up to them.  Jim could tell neither age nor gender.  The arms and legs were thin to fragility, and the face was bony, shadowed by an enormous brimmed hat.  The hands which reached out to Gary were large and heavy-knuckled.  The whole person, including the hat, stood somewhat below Gary's shoulder-height. 

Jim's stomach twisted at the thought of the last time he had seen anyone so thin. But perhaps it was some kind of illness.  Something unavoidable.  Not hunger. 

"Hey," said the waif, "Professor, how you riding?"--hands on Gary's arms below the pushed-up cuffs of the sweater.  And even the voice gave no clues --male?  female? old? young? 

"High, Redeye, riding high," said Gary. 

Redeye raised a pointed chin and as daylight got under the hat brim, Jim saw the reason for the nickname:  the right eye was so shot with red that it almost glowed.  The other, whose iris could be seen, was a pale gray color, limpid and expressionless as water. 

"Cutter down in?" Gary asked, standing easily under the clutching hands. 

"Nah, up.  Cleanin' day, Professor." 

"How'd you know?" Gary asked and Redeye laughed, or Jim thought that was the meaning of the thin sound that issued from Redeye's mouth.  Now Gary put one hand on the pointed shoulder and moved it back and forth, a movement that would have been shaking if it had not been so slow and, Jim thought, so gentle.  "Why don't you move earlier?  Why is it like this every damn month?" 

Redeye shrugged, thumb moving back and forth on Gary's forearm; looked past Gary at Jim. "Goldilocks gotta name?" 

Gary glanced back too, and then his eyes seemed caught by Jim's and he smiled slowly.  "Sounds good.  Goldilocks." 

"Cutter be _hot_ now."  Redeye's hands dropped away from Gary and the brim of the hat came down again. 

"Forget it," Gary looked back at Redeye, "Cut's my deal.  OK?" 

"OK." 

"Where's the equipment?" asked Gary, clearly changing the subject. 

"Cutter up with it." 

" _Inside_?" Gary positively yelped.  "Still _inside_?"  He was already peeling the bag from his shoulder as he asked, and hardly looked at Redeye's nod in reply.  "Fuck!  Jim, leave the bag--Redeye, watch 'em."  And he was off toward the nearest doorway.  Jim ran after. 

Inside, the walls were splashed with color and the staircase was narrow and dark, but Gary went up without pause and Jim followed.  On the second floor, Gary turned down one of the side corridors and went past a row of open doors to one that was shut. Casually he palmed the lock, and the door slid open. 

Inside was a makeshift lab of some kind--not chemical or medical, that was all Jim could tell. There were three substantial hulks of machinery, sitting on tables, and an assortment of tools and data storage discs, tapes, solids and canisters.  Cutter, whoever he or she was, wasn't there.  One table was empty, however. 

"God _damn_!"  Gary shouted, but turned while the shout still hung in the air to open a closet and pull out storage containers, one in each hand.  "God damn, goddamn, goddamngoddamn" \--he put the containers on the tables, oopened them, and began to scoop tools and data storage into them, and Jim moved forward to help.  Gary continued to swear, with a bit more variety, as they worked. 

"RESIDENTS VACATE IMMEDIATELY," chanted the loudspeakers, bone-shakingly loud at this distance. "CLEANING PROCEDURE WILL BEGIN IN FIFTY MINUTES ... " and the rest of the warning was unchanged.  Gary didn't look up, and judging from the movement of his lips, didn't stop swearing.  Jim gritted his teeth, which of course did nothing about the noise. 

A movement at the door made Jim look over, and he saw a slim brown man with a thin line of mustache and dramatic cheekbones.  He wore odd tubes of fabric on his arms, separate from his T-shirt - sleeves from a missing shirt, or perhaps a sweater - anyway they were pale and covered from the bulge of the biceps to the wrist.  The oddity drew Jim's eyes.  The man's hands were on the doorframe and he was looking at Gary, just flicking a glance at Jim occasionally as if to make sure he hadn't moved. 

The loudspeaker stopped, and at almost the same moment, Gary saw the man in the doorway.  "Cutter, you _bastard_!" Gary yelled.  "God _damn_ it!  Why is this stuff still _here_?" 

"Hadda find somebody to carry it," said Cutter, and stood aside to let in two enormously muscular men, one black and the other pale as sand, who had evidently been behind him in the corridor.  "'K, Jer, this one, and Oregon, that one," gesturing to the two biggest pieces of equipment, and the two heaved them up and carried them out without a word.  Jim felt about the size of a peanut next to them, and stood hastily out of the way. 

"Anyway," Cutter was saying, approaching Gary like a stalking creature, a panther or a wolf, "you wasn't hurryin', was you?  Not early?  Not checkin'?  Just here on a visit, you think?  Bringin' Starfleet boy there to show?"  He took Gary's head between both hands.  There was less than a hand's breadth between their bodies.  Cutter just looked for a few seconds, and then said much more softly, "Lookin' pretty, baby," and kissed Gary's forehead. 

Gary stepped back, and Cutter let him go, hands slipping to his sides.  "Don't call me baby," Gary said, but not heatedly.  And then, as if nervous, "Look, there's no time.  We gotta get this stuff _out_ , Cut." 

"I know," said Cutter, and turned back to the nearest table, where Gary had been working, and his gaze crossed Jim's.  "Got a name?" 

"Jim," said Jim, at the same time that Gary spoke. 

"Goldilocks, Redeye called him." 

"Red ain't no fool."  Cutter's eyes had never left Jim, but they showed no expression, blank and black as wet pebbles. "You in the bear house now, Goldilocks.  How you like it?" 

Jim felt his eyes narrowing.  "I'm holding my own," he said evenly.  "Helping out where I can. Like now." 

"And we'd better get on with it," said Gary, reaching in front of Cutter to pick up a tester and a disk. 

Still looking at Jim, Cutter relaxed just perceptibly, his mouth a little wider in what Jim thought was the beginning of a smile. "Ya," he said, and turned to the closet to get a storage container of his own. 

Oregon was back soon, and from his conversation with Cutter, Jim guessed that Jer was guarding the equipment.  He could only guess:  Oregon's speech was stranger than Redeye's to Jim's ears.  He thought there was probably Spanish mixed into it.  Maybe a few other things.  Cutter gestured and Oregon took the third big machine out of the room.  While he was gone, the warning blasted their ears again.  Forty minutes now. 

By the time Oregon was back again, the three containers were full, and Cutter stacked them in Oregon's arms.  Gary pulled out new boxes and they went on working.  When the second table was cleared, Jim folded up the legs, then did the same with the one that had been empty when they got there, and Oregon grabbed one with each huge hand and pulled them out of the room.  Another warning sounded, and Jim rubbed his abused ears but Oregon, on his way down the corridor, didn't so much as flinch. 

The last table was clear and the empty containers pulled out and stacked when Oregon got back the fourth time.  Each man grabbed whatever was nearest and left the room.  Jim, last to leave, paused at the door, but Gary called back, "Leave it, leave it open," so he did. 

Oregon led the way to the edge of the paved area, near the staircase that Jim and Gary had climbed.  Jer and the machines and Redeye and the bags and all the storage containers were grouped there.  And a woman who looked like an office worker, holding what looked like a specialized-function padd.  Gary took a step to the side and stopped, blocking Jim, the containers in their hands bumping. 

"Shit."  Gary's head was still turned toward the stranger. 

"What?" asked Jim. 

Gary looked at him searchingly for a moment.  "Look, you work for me.  A tech literacy program, pilot, privately funded.  Got it?" 

"I hear," said Jim, unsure how far he wanted to commit himself. 

"Good."  Gary strode away, and Jim followed again, not liking the pattern of this afternoon at all. 

They both put their containers down as the woman watched curiously.  "That's all, then," said Gary authoritatively. 

"Gary Mitchell?" asked the woman. 

"RESIDENTS VACATE ..." began the twenty-minute warning, and Jim saw Gary saying "Yes" to the woman, but she waited for the noise to end before she tried to go on. 

"The renter of Block A, Room 254?" 

"That's me.  Also Room 256."   Gary looked the woman up and down, just this side of insolence.  "You the rent-collector?" 

"I work for the Housing Authority, yes." 

"So let me check in and then we can get right back to work after the cleaning sequence."  Gary looked around.  "Where'd Redeye go?  Redeye!" 

The waifish person in the big hat materialized like magic - or, perhaps, had been somewhere behind Oregon or Jer all along, and now slipped around them, which Jim thought came to much the same thing \- and handed Gary one of the bags withouut being asked.  Gary rummaged in it for a moment and brought out a credit chip.  "OK." 

"Who are you?" the Housing Authority woman asked Redeye, who shrank back, hatbrim down. 

"Redeye runs errands for us at the Technical Literacy Program," said Gary, interposing as smoothly as if the question had been directed to him.  "She lives in the neighborhood." 

"Not here?" The woman's head swung toward Gary, her eyes intent. 

"Of course not here.  I have single occupancy.  A room for me and a separate room for the program.  I filled out all the forms;  you should have links there."  Gary craned his neck as if to get a look at the padd; the woman pulled it in closer to her body.  Gary stood back, smiled at the woman, and spoke earnestly.  "I think it's so terribly important to live among these people to truly understand them.  Of course, I don't live here *full* time." 

The woman now looked Gary over, evidently registering his casual but not shabby clothing.  Even the mutant sweater, Jim had to admit to himself, looked good on him. "Of course you don't," she said, her tone not quite businesslike but not clearly friendly or amused or even sexy, as far as Jim could tell. 

Gary smiled again.  Jim recognized it as the expression Gary had used in the Ethics class.  Jim wondered if Gary would say it had worked better on him than it evidently did on this woman, who went on without changing expression, "You have the rent." 

"Right here," Gary said, offering the chip.  She took it and passed it through the reader on her padd, then gave it back so daintily that Jim thought her fingers never touched Gary's.  Then she tapped a few commands into the padd, then turned it toward Gary, who picked a stylus out of the side of the thing somewhere, and signed it.  He tried the smile again, and now she unbent very slightly, the lines of her mouth a little less stern. 

"It's a good thing you're doing here," she said. 

"They do the work," Gary said earnestly, with a gesture at the ragtag group behind him.  Jim caught a sardonic glance from Oregon to Jer.  "Well, next month, then," Gary said, and the woman nodded and moved away. 

Jim waited until the ten-minute warning had sounded, when the Housing Authority person was well away, had collected several rents and was engaged in argument with someone swathed in shawls and scarves, waving as he or she gestured.  Then he came up behind Gary, who was seated on the concrete talking to Redeye in a low voice. 

"--don't think so, Red, I think he borrowed that idea from one of the guys he'd been reading himself, you know?  I haven't looked it up, though.  'F I find the book, send it to Cut, say next week--" 

"Gary," Jim said, not thinking much about how he felt about any of this, so he hardly registered that there was some kind of actual tutoring going on here. 

Gary looked up, then got up, moved the both of them back among the storage containers before he said, "What's the matter, Jim?" 

"Could you _tell_ me something?"  His voice was louder than he thought he'd intended, so he cleared his throat and tried again.  "Where _are_ we?" 

"This is my permanent address.  You know, everybody at the Academy has to have one."  Gary paused, then opened his mouth, but didn't speak for a moment too long--the loudspeaker started up again, and a loud honking horn, too.  "ATTENTION RESIDENTS:  CLEANING PROCEDURE WILL BEGIN IN SIXTY SECONDS."  Four honks, at second intervals, then the speaker, "FIFTY-FIVE SECONDS."  Jim stared, and Gary was as motionless though he must have seen all this before.  The honking went on;  the loudspeaker counted down. 

"FIVE.  FOUR.  THREE.  TWO.  ONE.  CLEANING PROCEDURE HAS BEGUN."  And it was true--there was a gushing noise and liquid of some sort spouted from the lacy web of pipes on the outside of the building.  "STAND WELL AWAY FROM THE BUILDING.  CLEANING FLUID IS TOXIC."  A few children dashed forward and skipped back, and adults hauled a couple of them away.  Fluid also streamed down the wall, then spurted unevenly from what must be drainage holes, and then pumped steadily for about a minute, as the speakers roared, "THE HOUSING AUTHORITY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE OR LEGALLY LIABLE FOR INJURIES, ILLNESS, BIRTH DEFECTS OR DEATH THAT MAY RESULT FROM BEHAVIOR THAT THESE ANNOUNCEMENTS FORBID.  ALLOW FIVE MINUTES TO PASS FOR EVAPORATION OF REMAINING FLUID AND AERATING BY BUILDING FANS BEFORE ENTERING BUILDING.  THANK YOU FOR ACTING AS RESPONSIBLE TENANTS." 

And then, at long last, it fell silent.  A foul, cutting, chemical stench wafted from the building as the cleaning fluid sat in the little moat surrounding the outer walls.  For a moment, everything seemed drowned and muted by the smell and the lack of that outrageously noisy voice.  Jim sat down on a storage container, and looked up at Gary without speaking. 

"It's a long story," Gary said at last.  "I'm gonna tell you, Jim, I brought you here to show you and then I was going to tell you everything.  I still will.  But I can't now.  I've got to get all this stuff back inside, or see that it gets in. And ... well ... but later, Jim, honestly, I will, really I will." 

As far as Jim could tell, looking into the brown eyes, this was a sincere, though nervously repetitive, statement.  He stood, put one hand and then the other on Gary's face, low, little fingers straying onto the warm neck.  He leaned forward, still slowly, but Gary didn't pull away even though his eyes shifted back and forth a little.  Jim kissed him, slowly, opening his mouth and fucking in and out with his tongue in case Gary needed a reminder or what side they were both on.  Gary tilted his head a little backward but Jim went on kissing until Gary made a little sound in his throat that somehow made the rest of the day's mystery less important. 

Then Jim eased away, enjoying the blurred look of Gary's eyes and mouth. 

"Better get this stuff upstairs again, then," he said, and stepped sideways as though to get over to one of the folded tables. 

Gary reached for his waist, pulled him close again.  "We've got a few minutes before we can go in." 

"Well, then ..." but Jim had a mischievous, perverse feeling under his ribs, and instead of moving closer, he said, "... you could finish whatever you were talking to Redeye about." 

Gary's eyes narrowed.  It was hard to tell how serious the expression was. 

"All right, then," he said, and walked away without a glance over his shoulder. 

Jim shook his head.  _Be careful what you ask for._

Eventually the lab stuff, tech stuff--whatever--and Gary still hadn't explained it--was back in the rooms, and Jim shook out his arms and tried to roll the stiffness out of his shoulders.  "Work hard, huh, Goldilocks?" Gary teased him.  The huge guys had gone, Redeye had slipped off, and Cutter was still in the room putting things back in the chaotic working state they'd found them in. 

"Watch out.  Next time you're in Iowa I'll show you what hard work is." 

They walked about halfway down the corridor to the stairs, seemingly on their way out, but Gary paused suddenly, and looked away when Jim stopped too.  "Gotta tell Cut something," he mumbled. 

"OK," said Jim as patiently as he could, turning back too. 

Gary's hand caught Jim's arm.  "No," he said, "wait." 

"I'm not waiting around in the hallway."  Jim was tired of being ordered around and of feeling out of place. 

Gary's hand tightened, and he stared as hard as if he'd never seen Jim before.  A long silence dragged by before he said, "Please," for the first time since they had left the dorm.  He put his free hand on Jim's cheek, and said slowly, "I'm asking ... if I ask you, please, will you wait?  Outside?" 

"No," said Jim. 

Gary's hand brushed back into Jim's hair and his fingers moved slowly, massaging Jim's scalp;  Gary's expression was totally absorbed, intent, the muscles of his face sorting into a blank tension that Jim took a moment to recognize.  He hadn't seen anyone in that gutwrenching fear since Tarsus. 

"Who _is_ Cutter?" Jim asked.  "What can he do to you?" 

Gary's other hand slid up Jim's arm, brushed into his neck, around his throat, up around his ear, Gary seemed unable touch Jim's skin enough.  "I was a fool to bring you." 

"Gary."  Jim moved his head to one side as if trying to see around a barrier.  "What are you afraid of?" 

"You." 

"You can't be," said Jim.  "What do you mean?" 

"You," Gary repeated, pulling Jim closer, kissed his forehead slowly, almost reverently, and then put his cheek on Jim's head.  "Damn," he said, " _such_ a fool," still gathering Jim into his body, tighter, moving his hands up and down Jim's stiff back.  "Just let me ... just this time ... " and he nuzzled into Jim's neck, put his fingers through Jim's hair, touched him all over, held him as close as if he were never going to touch Jim again. 

Jim felt an impulse to say, 'I'll protect you, I'll help you, I won't let go,' but held back.  If he had learned anything lately it was not to assume he understood what was going on.  He put his arms around Gary but said nothing. 

"Sweet," said Cutter's voice, and Gary let go and turned back to the doorway where the older man stood.  Jim followed back to the lab, and after a moment's hesitation, into it. 

"You show off too much," said Cutter dispassionately.  "Now you got somethin' for me or not?" 

Gary took some disks from his bag.  Cutter held out his hand but Gary jerked the disks up, then said, "Special job." 

"Ya?" 

Gary shrugged.  "Use for whatever's up, but do me a composite--linear, flat, real-time, no-blur, no animation.  Not a sim.  You'll need to bring up the light and the sound.  The yellow one's the best pickup, I think.  Edit for--" he faltered, swallowed, "Mick, and anything about Mick, about being taped." 

"You on it," said Cutter, not a question. 

"Yeah.  Sure." 

"Goldilocks too." 

For two seconds the room was totally motionless, silent.  Even Cutter seemed not to breathe. 

"Yeah," said Gary then, and he never looked toward Jim, but the muscles at his jaw twitched and his hands closed into fists and then opened. 

Now Jim knew. 

Cutter took the disks from Gary and put them on the table without looking at them.  "One copy?"  he asked. 

"Yeah," said Gary, his voice small and tired. 

"When Mick comes?" 

"Tell him you've got it already." 

"Pay'im?" 

"No."  Gary paused, then shrugged.  "Whatever.  You decide." 

Jim unclenched his teeth with an effort.  "What," he said, slowly and carefully.  "Is.  This.  For." 

"Later," said Gary, still looking at Cutter. 

"Now!"  Jim took a step forward, but Gary didn't turn.  " _Now,_ Gary!" 

Gary began to shake his head;  Jim reached for his shoulder and spun him, the other hand closing hard before he'd really decided, so it was with a kind of surprise that Jim saw his own fist connect, saw Gary's chin snapping up and Gary staggering back.  But it felt good, in that moment, almost as good as fucking him, so Jim meant the second punch completely, the one that doubled Gary over and made him choke.  Then Gary's fists clenched too, came up to hit back but just grazed Jim's cheekbone, and then Cutter was out from behind the table, catching Gary's arms and pulling him back around the corner, so the table and the editing machine and Cutter's wiry shoulder all stood between Jim and Gary. 

Jim dropped his hands.  Cutter, eyeing him, relaxed.  Gary wheezed, bracing himself against the edge of the table. 

Cutter looked at his bent head.  "Baby," he said, "you gotta learn to brief y' boys." 

Jim didn't stay to hear Gary's response. 

He ran down the stairs, narrowly missing someone on the landing--shadowy figure, long dark hair, a voice calling after him without the words registering--by the time he stood in the doorway looking out at the concrete yard, there was a reason for the pounding blood in his head and throat.  But ordinarily a few breaths would settle it and this time it kept on.  He stared across the yard at children in a remote corner, on their knees on the ground, perhaps drawing on the pavement or taking something apart.  He heard Cutter's and Gary's voices so clearly that he almost turned to look: _'Goldilocks on it.'  'Yeah.'_

Jim walked to the nearest of the concrete tables and sat down, his eyes still turned idly toward the children.  He kept on seeing images, hearing voices, memories like flares of static breaking the blank silence of his present mind.  _'We're not doing this for Mick.'_ Gary's face so close he could see the pores of his skin.  _'Don't let go.  Don't.'_ The way he'd grabbed the desk-leg.  _'Use for whatever's up.'_ Cutter's face when he first looked at Gary. 

His own voice again:  _'How can I trust you, baby?'_

The children were sitting up, standing;  they were yelling;  one struck out at another, who ran away, around the side of the building. 

It had been a stupid thing to do, Jim realized, but couldn't see himself going back into the building, climbing to the lab, trying to find something to say.  He stood, leaning on the table, hands flat on its sandy-rough surface.  Looked at the door.  Walked away, across the yard, down the narrow stair to the street. 

As he walked down the slope, he heard footfalls behind him.  While the street was by no means deserted, he thought he was being followed, and so he crossed the street on a diagonal, passing a group of people cooking meat over a raised metal pot of coals.  The smell of the smoke and the roasting meat followed him down the block as persistently as the footsteps.  Jim picked up speed, still walking, weaving past pedestrians and a child on a bicycle, but never lost the steady tread that matched his own. 

He turned an unnecessary corner because the old storefront there came all the way out to the sidewalk and made good cover.  Spinning on his feet, he reached out and caught hold of his stalker, anger still balancing him on the edge of violence.  He wanted to deck the person, especially if it were Gary;  grabbing was reckless, but not as stupid as hitting out. 

The person he was holding was Redeye.  He had grabbed higher than he meant, the very corners of the bony shoulders.  The hat brim tipped up, then down.  Jim let go. 

"You lost," Redeye muttered, not looking up. 

Jim wasn't sure, but if he wasn't lost now he knew it wouldn't take long.  "Show me how to get to the muni stop." 

Redeye's head turned to one side, then the other, so slowly that Jim didn't realize until the movement stopped that it had meant no.  
  

*********  
**Interlude:  Gary's POV**  
*******

Without moving, even looking up, Gary listened to Jim run down the hallway, steps picking up speed as they grew fainter.  When he felt the touch of Cutter's hand on his hair, then on his shoulder, he grabbed fiercely and found a bony wrist which he held with no gentleness or gratitude.  He was angry, he realized. 

Cutter pushed nearer instead of trying to pull away.  He hauled Gary away from the table, held him in an iron grip and glared back into his eyes.  " _Oh_ no," he said.  In those two syllables was a whole diatribe about whose fault this really was, and of course Gary already knew it all. 

The anger drained away and left Gary feeling empty again.  His eyes fell to a spot just below Cutter's collar-bone, and for some period of time Gary could not measure, they stood in silence.  Then Cutter's grip shifted just a little on Gary's arms, and Gary knew that if he wanted he could move closer, put his arms around Cut's waist and his head against the dark-clad chest. 

But he also knew it wouldn't be any comfort this time. 

So he moved back a half step, and Cutter's hands fell away to his sides.  Gary still couldn't meet the older man's gaze, so he did the other thing he'd always done after time apart:  he reached for Cut's wrist and pushed back the knitted sleeve. 

Cutter's forearms were solid, each muscle and tendon distinct, and not very hairy.  They were also criss-crossed with scar lines, some so faint they were barely visible, others like cat-scratches, others denting the copper-brown skin, others pale or shiny.  And this one, up near the crease of the elbow, this new one red and long and barely not bleeding. 

Gary checked the other arm but there was nothing fresh there.  Cutter, as always, stood almost docile under the inspection. 

It hadn't been so very long ago that Gary had woken in the night to run his fingers over the scars.  Not so very long ago that he would bend his head like this, and brush his lips along the new scab.  Only two years or so.  Only a lifetime away. 

Cutter took a long breath and his other hand stroked up the nape of Gary's neck and into his hair.  Then, as if Gary's touch against the skin of his arm were too intimate, Cutter's fingers spread and tightened on Gary's scalp and pulled his head up until their eyes met. 

In that other life, while they were this close, Cutter used to tell him what his next job would be. 

"Baby," Cut said, and troubled expectation shivered along Gary's nerves, "tell him." 

"What?" said Gary, jolted back to the present, feeling like he'd lost track of the conversation.  "Tell who what?" 

Cutter's lips compressed;  Gary knew he hated having to explain himself.  "Goldilocks.  You lookin' at mine.  You with him, you show him yours.  Yes," because Gary had looked away, at the disks that lay on the table like poison pills, "Yes, you got to.  Unless ...." 

Gary looked back at Cutter's face, and though it had no more expression than usual, Gary had always known how to read it.  Now the longing he saw there made Gary's own throat tighten. 

"Unless you don't follow after him."  Cutter's voice was so low Gary felt he was just remembering it. 

"Can't," he said, "I can't leave him.  He has no idea where he is.  Anyway .... " 

"You can't stay here," Cutter finished Gary's sentence. 

"Can't," Gary said, "can't you ... move on?" 

Cutter said nothing until Gary realized it was an answer.  And then Cutter was the one to step back, eyes on his sleeves as he pulled them down again. Gary watched.  Cutter looked up when he was finished, saying quite normally, "Next month." 

"Next month," Gary echoed, and then remembered.  "I'll come to help you move.  But once I, once I have that tape, there won't be any more rent.  You should know that." 

Cutter's eyebrows raised.  After a moment he said, "We manage." 

It was a sentence Gary had heard often enough but had never felt it shut him out before.  "When I'm earning .... " he began, more to get Cut's response than to make a real offer, and then his apprehensions were confirmed. 

"We manage," Cutter repeated flatly. 

"OK," Gary said, unable to understand how getting what he wanted and having almost everything work according to plan should have made him feel so miserable.  
 


End file.
